


Lead Me Back Home

by Prettyburgerprincess



Series: Break In [2]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Age Play, Daddy Kink, Drama, F/M, Healing, Human Caroline Forbes, Kinky, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Pining, Porn With Plot, Spanking, Threesome, kidnap, mild eating disorder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:11:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 78,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prettyburgerprincess/pseuds/Prettyburgerprincess
Summary: Some things just don't change. She should've really expected that Klaus would be one of them.They aren't even a month in to-...whatever they had been doing. Not even a whole two weeks!And he had already killed someone in her name without so much as blinking.Now she needs time and distance to get her head on straight, but why does that seem to look like Elijah and some weird, kinky phone sex?
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Elijah Mikaelson, Caroline Forbes/Elijah Mikaelson/Klaus Mikaelson, Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, Elijah Mikaelson/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Break In [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597435
Comments: 22
Kudos: 105





	1. Oh No

There was nothing quite like the warm inward glow of a lazy morning after a busy week. Klaus' bare back was next to her, his hands disappeared under his pillow and hers, his fingers loosely folded over her palm.

He was facing away from her, all bedhead curly, especially the little semi-circles around the back of his nape. Shoulders, made lean in his youth, were smattered with freckles and before she knew it, she'd rolled over to press her lips against them.

Like he'd have a flavor she didn't know after the last two weeks she'd spent in his company.

The way the constellations on his body were framed, she knew he'd earned them in the sun, at some point. Vampirism meant no new scars and no new changes, so these precious imperfections were made in his human days. She reached up and plucked a curl, dragging it out to see it spring back against his neck.

"You're not supposed to wake people when they're sleeping deeply," he mumbled.

"That's sleepwalking."

"I think you'll find me in a frightful temper when I'm without my beauty rest."

"I think your temper is the same regardless of how much sleep you get."

"I'm tired these days," he drawled. "Someone keeps me up all night."

"Lucky. What's her name?" She wriggled closer to him, aligning their bodies until she was his big spoon. His perfect ass filled her lap and she wrapped an arm over his waist and around his chest, thumb stroking over his nipple, her foot niggling the back of his calf until he shifted and she could claim his leg in the hook of her knee.

"I can't remember," he teased. "So many conquests, over the years. You know how I am about blondes."

"Oh, she's a blonde?" She blew a stream of breath against the back of his ear and watched the hairs on his shoulder stand on end.

"Golden," he agreed. "A goddess."

"So she's pretty?"

"She's my every fantasy from head to toe."

Caroline leaned up on her elbow and flicked the very tip of her tongue against his lobe. She watched his lashes flutter, and felt his hand close over the back of hers, his fingers weaving to lock her to his chest. She pressed her mouth to his high cheekbone, dragging her lips back to his ear.

"Is she any good?" she whispered.

"Enthusiastic." His teeth appeared with a grin, and he blinked open his eyes, shifting to look up at her, their fingers still locked on his chest. "Passionate. Daring."

"Daring?" She smiled a little, feeling heat creep into her cheeks. "What makes her daring?"

"She put her throat in my hands," he rumbled, shifting more entirely onto his back. He cupped her face with his free hand, stroking the flushed skin under her eye. "She asked me to bite her."

"Sounds like she trusts you," she mused.

His eyes, so blue, were glazed with some emotion she couldn't - wouldn't, yet - identify. He leaned up to steal a slow kiss, and tangled his fingers into her hair. Slowly, she crawled over him, their naked bodies meeting under the sheet as she took her seat upon his waist. Her hair curtained them from the outside morning, and she hummed when he lapped at the still swollen outline of her mouth.

"Good morning," she murmured against his lips.

"Good morning indeed. I've never been good at rousing out of my own time," he confessed. "Though if it continues to happen like this, I might be."

Surging up, he claimed her mouth, and she smiled boldly against it, counting it as a win.

It was in this quiet, heated moment she became aware of the bells. At first she was too distracted to really care about them, but once she heard it she couldn't unhear it. She pinned his fist above his head, causing his free hand to take a much more meaningful grip on her hair. But all she could hear aside from the gentle suction of their mouthes was: _ding, ding, ding_.

"How long has that bell been going off?" she muttered against his prickly chin.

"I don't care," he retorted, and resumed kissing her.

"It's my iPad," she realized. "An alarm for something."

"I thought you had the day off?"

"I have the day off working," she corrected with a cheeky smile, licking her lip so close to his own that his was caught in the crossfire. He tried to lean up and chase her, but she shoved him down and gave him a slow grin. "That doesn't mean I'm not _very busy_."

"I hope you're implying busy with me," he warned her. "Because if I've been woken up like this to no end-"

"You'll say 'thank you Caroline love'," she mocked him in her best Klaus impression. Elijah did it better. She bent over him again to suck on his lower lip, change his pout into a smile.

"I'll pay you back," he said against her mouth. "Trust me, love, I've got a lot of time behind my eyes thinking of the different ways I'd wake you up."

The dark promise in his tone made her believe him. There was never an actual doubt that he would follow through, either - the problem was, she wasn't protesting the thought of it all that much. Actually, it sounded like something she wanted to check off a list.

She tightened her thighs around his chest and traced a line of freckles over his pronounced collarbone.

"You're very distracting," she lamented, glancing over her shoulder to where the iPad was dinging, on charge by his desk. "But it's gonna make me crazy."

"Not if I do it first," he said boldly. With the hand in her hair steering her back to a soft kiss, she sighed and tried to forget it, humming pleasantly as he made good on attempting to send her crazy with a kiss instead.

It was all getting pretty hot and steamy - she had begun to rock against the ridges of his toned belly, her hips undulating without her explicit permission.

He was allowing her to ride, quite content to let her play at being in charge. It thrilled her, and he knew it. He knew it because she was leaving a wet shine where she was rubbing, and _she_ knew _he_ knew because he was _smirking_ as he kissed her.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

Ding.

_Ding._

_Ding._

_Ding._

With a resigned exhale through her nose, she sat up on his waist and looked around with a scowl.

"Ignore it," he urged, his demanding hand clamping lightly on her thigh.

"I'm just gonna turn it off," she said, and dropped a quick kiss onto his nose.

His palm was burning hot, thumb inordinately close to the hinge of her hip and lady business. Klaus had become quite acquainted with said lady business, and the place he was holding bore a blue mark made by his own mouth from only a few hours before. He pressed it with his thumb, brow twitching in amusement when she sucked in a small gasp and caught his wrist.

"Quickly," he said throatily, and put his hands behind his head.

All the sheets twisted around her in a makeshift toga as she skipped across the room, not entirely shy, but not game enough to jiggle her way over to the desk in the bold streaks of light from the sun outside. She had meant only to press the tab to shut the damn thing off, but stopped when she saw the description.

Was it any wonder she hadn't remembered it? Or hadn't realized it was an alarm? Her alarm jingle was an actual foghorn. It wasn't anything she had set. It was a network calendar reminder from the building she still had her things left in; her first solo piece of living, the one she was going to deal with eventually and still paid rent for.

The reminder was simply 'Funeral today 12:00', listed an address that she didn't recognize.

Frowning, she clicked it, patting in the code. With a single swipe, she saw the google share, the people attending and the ones who were carpooling, planning to meet in the under cover garage at the apartment building. She saw the post asked to bring photos, because the DeLonse family apparently didn't have very many.

DeLonse?

She frowned a little harder when she tapped the link to the invite that she had missed, sent a week ago to the day.

Richard DeLonse was to be laid to rest in an out-of-town little graveyard out by Bear Creek, just outside of Jackson, Mississippi. The posts from her fellow residents were every version of shocked and hurt - some were shaken. Only two people spoke about her: Joyce, the apartment next to hers, and David, 3B.

_Anyone heard from Caroline?_ he queried. _Is she shook up? Can someone check?_

_She hasn't been home,_ Joyce replied. _Or if she has, I haven't heard her._

_That girl gon run herself into a nub, _ David commented. _Can someone send her an email and make sure she's okay, please?_

_I will,_ said Joyce.

"Richard?" she murmured. It was moving through her head, though sluggishly. She had been sleeping more than she usually had, but that was often peppered with wakefulness and nocturnal activities. She also kinda blamed blood loss. Because who the hell was Richard, that everyone knew?

"Beg your pardon?" Klaus said, still reclined from the bed.

"Richard," she repeated thoughtfully. She reached up and pressed her fingers to the two puncture wounds, as if that would somehow help.

"Whoever he is," Klaus drawled. "Please turn him off and come back to bed."

And like, ordinarily she would have, except she'd already gotten into the email that Joyce sent, and her blood ran cold.

_Caroline,_

_I don't know if you've heard, and hate to be the bringer of bad news, but Rich passed away. His autopsy just came back as blunt force trauma to the chest and is being followed up with by the cops._

_Can you drop by and let me know you're okay? We're worried about you._

_Yours, Joyce._

"Rich," she breathed, her eyes going wide.

"I'm getting jealous," Klaus said mildly.

She looked up at him, suddenly feeling like the sheet wasn't actually enough between them both. She felt more naked and vulnerable than she had when he'd been inside her.

Something about her face clued him in, because one second he was lounging like a King and the next he was sitting, his half interested dick protruding from under his belly as he looked at her with a frown.

"What?" he said. "What's wrong?"

"You killed my landlord," she accused under her breath. "You killed him to get into my apartment, didn't you?"

He blinked.

"You needed me," he said. That was it. His apology.

Rich had been a very good man. One of the best. He'd been dealt a shitty hand but he'd never been anything but loving and kind, with his softly spoken words and heart of actual gold.

And Klaus had killed him. For her.

_That would be why he hasn't answered your calls_, said a very dry voice at the back of her head. It sounded a lot like Katherine. Recognizing that made her flinch outwardly.

"Caroline... You needed me. You were being attacked. What else was I supposed to do?"

Numb, she locked the iPad and set it aside, holding the sheet to her chest with both hands. She felt sticky and uncomfortable and cold but she was sweating. She couldn't look at him. She couldn't think straight.

Her Hello Kitty bag was in the corner of the room on an antique chair, and she skipped to it quickly, snatching the handle as she fled the room, clipping the door with her shoulder as she went.

"_Caroline._"

She hoped that Elijah wouldn't mind the intrusion. She bashed into his door and locked it behind her, skipping over to his en suite to lock that one between them all again without looking at the lump in the bed. The sheet was trapped under the door and it yanked against her clutching hand as she tried to walk away.

She choked, tried to stifle it behind her fingers, then dropped the bag, sheet and pretense, and bent over the toilet to throw up. She heaved empty air and then vile bile up into the water, her arms braced in a halo around the impeccably clean seat.

Her hair got caught in the spray and even when she turned on the shower and rinsed, she could smell it still. Using Elijah's pricey all-natural herbal shampoo didn't help either. Her hair did feel nice, though.

The only things left in her bag were some leggings, a bra and her vans. Not even some underwear or socks. It didn't matter, though, because Elijah's hamper had a clean if crinkly white shirt in it, which she pulled on after her sneakers.

If Klaus had followed, she wouldn't ever know, because he wasn't making much of a scene. The elder brother, who she at least expected questions from, hadn't so much as knocked. She was worried, for a split second, that they were killing each other - but experience told her they'd be noisy about it.

On the floor, she held her wet head, trying to think of literally anything to do.

Just that morning had been bliss. She had kissed a murderer and adored his violent body and wanted to be with his bloodied hands. That dreamy, golden haze seemed much further away than less than an hour. Her chest hurt, and she dabbed her eyes with a sleeve that wasn't hers.

God Elijah even smelled expensive.

It was as if to directly contradict Klaus, who was more earthy and natural. He wore cologne on occasion, but it wasn't nearly as sweet, or somehow smooth in her nose. _Soothing, _her brain supplied, as though making a correction. He smelled like the aromatherapy mom used to fill the house with when she needed to calm down.

Thinking about her mother also made her want to throw up. She didn't. But that queasy feeling lingered in her empty stomach.

After her wet hair had dried down to damp, she concluded that she needed to get out of the compound. Go back to the apartment. She still had time to see everyone and decide whether or not to leave with them to go to a funeral she was responsible for.

Even thinking it made her want to expel contents from an already empty belly. She clutched her skull and shut her burning eyes tight, and waited until the feeling passed.

She didn't want to talk to any one. She didn't have anything to say. There were so many feelings, guilt and shame and rage, sadness and regret and pity - but also, alarmingly, relief. Gratification. Klaus had come for her and he'd saved her modesty as well as a life of fear.

But he'd paid without someone's life to do it.

Outside Elijah's bathroom window was a drainage pipe that felt sturdy when she took it in both hands and gave a shake. She stepped onto the back of the toilet and went out feet first, digging her sneakers into the grainy paint of the wall as she turned out of the second floor and clung to the window sill with her fingers.

Then she climbed down, and started walking.


	2. Oh My God

"Careline!"

Joyce had taken one look at her face and pulled her into the mother of all hugs. She wept as Caroline began to bawl, and then steered her into the building and used her spare key to get inside Caroline's apartment.

Klaus had been right when he told her he'd gotten it cleaned; it was spotless, everything in it's place. Despite not being visited in over a week, it smelled clean and fresh.

"Where has you been?" the woman scolded. "You damn near gave Davey an' me a heart attuk wit' all the stress'a you an' all'a this business, you know?"

"I've been-"

"Busy," the woman guessed.

Caroline cleared her throat.

"There's this guy..." she trailed off to let the other woman fill the blank, putting new water into the kettle, and flicking it on. Just for something to do with her hands, she lifted out the biscuit jar and hoped that they were still fresh. They were. Barely.

"You tink I didn' know, from the state o' you by one look now?" Joyce lifted her brows at her mixed ensemble. "Or the way you fallen in my arms like you 'aven't ever seen no real love in a long while? 'E 'asn't been treatin' you right. 'E kept you 'way from chur friends too long."

There weren't words enough to explain how badly she missed her mother. Even one more hug would've been enough to set her straight.

Klaus was many things - he wasn't exactly a cuddler. Careful, adoring, reverent. But cuddling was a little out of his league. Especially when she and he hadn't exactly discussed the perimeters of their situation.

Were they exclusive? He was coming home to her every night, and she didn't want to look for anyone else. But also... Did that make them boyfriend and girlfriend? Because she _lived_ with him. She'd moved into his room, more or less. She slept better when he was there.

"I only heard about Rich this morning," she told her cupboards, fishing out two mugs to blatantly ignore her friends chastising. "I don't know anything about what happened."

"We thought it was 'is heart," Joyce explained quietly, her usually bombastic voice gone awfully muted. "We knew it 'ad to be - it's been broke so long. Then that autopsy came back. Said whatta thump knocked 'is chest is stopped 'is heart, cracked 'is bones 'round. Looked like a car accident they sometimes get."

Caroline poured out the tea and passed over the biscuits.

"Aw, my poor love," Joyce said, getting readily to her feet. She took Caroline's silently bawling head to her breast and hugged her entire head, patting her back a little too hard. But the warmth in the gesture was what she needed, and she soaked in the affection. "Awh, come now, Careline. 'E missed his wife and child, now, y'hear? An' now 'e gets to with them again. We lost a good man but God got granted a magnificent angel, you know."

"Yeah," Caroline sobbed, clutching the woman. "But it's still not fair."

"I know," she soothed, still thumping Caroline's shoulder. She sniffed in through whistling nostrils and Caroline felt a tear drop onto her back. "I know."

* * *

Caroline dressed more appropriately for a funeral in sheer black tights in shiny black pumps, and a neat black dress with a square neckline. She wore a navy silk scarf to hide the two impressions on her throat and tied her wavy hair into a sleek, tight bun at the top of her head.

She had quite a few pictures with Rich that she would take and share with his family; when she'd first moved in, he had sensed her loneliness; to remedy it, he insisted that he taught her how to play poker, and so she'd spent all of her free time in his place, learning the tips and tricks.

She'd eventually started inviting other people on his behalf, and soon they had quite a syndicate running. They, quite nefariously, played for matches and sometimes straws. Before Caroline had taken the second job, she'd catered the poker parties for residents new and old, and the photos were all of big grins and the infamous badly scratched felt table.

One of them, now her undoubted favorite, was one where she'd wrapped him side along in a big hug with shut eyes in real laughter, and he was crinkly eyed, red-faced and sheepish with his arm carefully set on her side. She'd brought him a heinous Hawaiian shirt for an inside joke she couldn't remember. It had burst the buttons over his full gut and it had made him pat the hairy skin and declare he was going on a diet.

When everything was said and done, her friend mourned and laid to rest, the residents returned to the apartment to drink and play poker in his honor.

Caroline, however, walked back to the compound with Elijah's shirt in her handbag, and spare key in her purse.

As soon as she pushed open the doors Klaus was there, in a maroon Henley and jeans, booted feet braced for impact. He stared at her breeze past him with big eyes, and then followed at her side.

"What else was I going to do?" he said urgently. "I could hear them trying to get at you through the door. He wouldn't grant me access."

When that inspired absolutely nothing, he blurred around to stand in her way, reaching to touch her face.

She jerked as though he'd threatened to slap her and took a step back, blinking at him owlishly.

"Caroline," he implored her. "I had to get to you."

It swirled in her head, the careful way he'd assured her that he had gotten in, and how he'd had her apartment cleaned. Undoubtedly any of the footage related to Rich's death would no longer exist, and any one who had seen anything would have 'forgotten' it.

She tried to step around him, but he blocked her. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin and met his eyes dead on. A gurgle from her hungry stomach made her hands curl into fists when she realized she hadn't eaten all day.

Her eyes were swollen and she knew that she wasn't a pretty crier. Yet there he was, daring to try and explain himself without so much as a 'sorry', and expected her to _what_?

"I need to go to bed," she said thickly.

He blanched, studying her face. He seemed to weigh his following words before he said them, which was hilarious in retrospect, because it made her more angry than anything else he'd said to her.

"With me?"

Her blood boiled. A morbid part of her brain wanted him to sink his teeth into her veins and suck out the mouthful of acid that would coat his tongue and char his throat. She stepped around him pointedly, stopping to glare at him in warning, then clicked her heels up the stairs and shut her bedroom door behind her.

She didn't lock it. What was the point? If he wanted in, he'd get in.

Her phone had been on charge all day by her bed, left made by her own hand prior to disappearing into Klaus' bed the night before. She'd been in Klaus' circle for so long she hadn't bothered to use the room for anything besides storing her things - mixing his and hers in the draws seemed like too much, too soon.

She'd barely untied the silk scarf from her throat when there was a knock at the door.

Elijah. Had to be. Klaus didn't know how to knock.

She pulled the door open and the scarf slithered from her throat, immediately catching Elijah's eye. He caught the silk between his index and middle finger, gracefully flicking it to hand it back.

In his other hand, a plateful of toasted sandwiches.

"Forgive my lack of finesse. I had short notice to prepare," he said with gentle humor.

"I'm not hungry," was her mumbled retort, directed at the topmost sandwich.

"I'm not asking," he informed her. Now he was holding both her scarf and the plate out, she slowly reached out and took the scarf, watching it slide through the crevice created by his fingers.

She turned and let him inside with a jerk of her head, and shut the door behind him.

"It's been a _Day_," she said, heels clicking as she reached up and unpinned the black stones at her lobes.

"Niklaus has been beside himself," he said agreeably. "What has he done now?"

She didn't want to say it, so she made herself busy finding somewhere to put the earrings. She watched them while taking in a calming breath, feeling the trembling in her lower lip subside. Keeping her back turned to him as she picked up her heel and undid the buckle with shaking fingertips, the shoe came off and she sank a few inches.

The relief of a free foot was immeasurable. Once the other shoe was off, she had regained her composure, and made herself busy to put them away neatly in the cupboard she had been given. It was bare of much. She'd packed her entire life into a Hello Kitty duffle in a blind panic after the break in, after all. What she had was work clothes, and a t-shirt she'd stolen from Klaus to sleep in.

"I have your shirt," she said, shutting the doors.

"What shirt?"

She felt his eyes on her head as she glossed quietly to her fallen bag, and bent to retrieve it. She'd folded it neatly, but it was still damp from where her wet hair had soaked it and crinkly from being shoved up at the sleeves.

"I stole it," she confessed with a muted smile, managing to aim it at him. "Out of the hamper."

"Why?"

"I was half naked in your bathroom," she shrugged, and held it out to him. "And I needed a shirt?"

"Well, you're welcome to it," he said. He set the plate down by her bedside and took it from her hands, now standing close to her. He looked at her with dark eyes gently assessing, and tucked the fabric wad under his arm to take her hand in both of his, rubbing her knuckles. "Tell me about your _Day_."

She smiled.

It was not happy.

"I just need to go to bed," she told him faintly.

"You need to eat first," he reminded her.

"I'm not hungry."

"Again." His tone firmed. "I'm not asking. Sit. Eat."

She didn't have the capacity to argue with him, so she pulled her hand out of his and stormed over to the bed, grabbing one sandwich and taking a crunchy bite of it. An explosion of flavor - good, melty cheese and rich, thinly sliced ham - assaulted her tongue. Around all the mourning and the few sips of wine she'd had earlier, it made her stomach growl.

Her slouch to the bed was both grateful and sulky.

He sat by her, undoing the button of his coat as he went, the folded shirt migrating to his lap. He stroked hands over the soft, expensive material, and waited until she had finished a whole sandwich to speak.

"Would you like me to compel you to sleep easy, tonight?" he murmured.

"I'm taking vervain," she muttered, and set aside the sandwich she'd meant to take a bite out of.

He noticed, looking pointedly between them, until she picked it up again and nibbled the corner.

"Whatever my brother has done to earn your ire," he said softly. "I know he cares deeply that it's affected you enough to leave all day without a word. He's been worried."

She took another bite to stop the vicious reply that Klaus didn't care about anything unless it directly affected himself. That he was selfish and impulsive and hot-headed.

But then she remembered that, hey yeah, _so was she_. And she sunk a defeated inch, her dress pinching her in the waist.

"_I've_ been worried," Elijah went on, even more quietly.

"You shouldn't have been. I'm fine," she muttered, putting the sandwich down, half eaten, reaching for the zip on the side of the garment.

"You didn't have your phone," he offered. "I called. When you didn't answer I may or may not have assumed the worst. There may, or may not, have been a small hunting party out for you for most of the day."

"A whole hunting party, Elijah?" She had enough energy to be amused with that. "Really?"

He lifted his forefinger and thumb, squinting at the tiny space between.

"Just a little one," he amended.

"As nice as it is that you went complete dad-mode on me - it hasn't been going unnoticed, by the way," she teased him, butting his arm with her elbow. And she wasn't sure why, but it made his smile fade dramatically at the corners, his eyes turning to the neat lines ironed into his trousers. She wasn't sure why he suddenly seemed a little on edge, but continued her train of thought before she lost it. "But I'm not... I'm not worth that kind of energy. I haven't been a good friend to you. I said I would, and I haven't. I'm really sorry."

"What are you talking about?" He frowned, a dent appearing in between his eyebrows.

"Because you're so good to me," she said, and swallowed a hasty mouthful to stop the thickening of her throat, the tell-tale incoming of tears. She bit trembling lips and managed to look him in the eye. "You are really, really good to me. You look after me better than - better than I probably deserve-"

"It is, and always will be, my genuine pleasure," he promised her. "Caroline, you mustn't be so hard on yourself. What are you talking about, you don't deserve to be looked after?"

"I just don't," she said, shrugging. "I'm a - major spaz-"

"You are a moderate spaz," he corrected fondly.

"I'm shallow and I'm needy, and I always say the wrong things, I'm impulsive and childish and I'm selfish and I don't think -" She threw her hands up. "I was literally just trying to tell you how good you are, and it ended up about me!"

"Hm," he said thoughtfully, then leaned in a little closer, his eyebrow cocked. "Have you actually met my little brother? Why do you think I'm so fond of you?"

"Stop it," she said, with a laugh that didn't mean to come out. Stupid charming Elijah. She shoved him a little, and he even humored her by moving. The problem was, her stupid hand decided to wrap around his bicep. And then her stupid head butted down onto his shoulder like a nuzzling kitten. Stupid. Impulsive. "And I-... I've just been... _busy_...It's not good enough. You deserve better. You deserve better from me, and I'm sorry that I've been absent."

His hand settled over the one she closed over his arm, smoothing the tension out of her fingers.

"You missed a bit."

"Huh?"

"Pardon," he corrected.

"Pardon, dad?" she said with a smile.

He playfully narrowed his eyes at her.

"I said you missed a bit," he said warmly. "You missed the part about your outrageous work-ethic. You missed your loyalty, and your kindness. You missed how clever you are, and how sharp you can be, and how much forgiveness is in your beautiful soul. I see it. Klaus sees it. Why don't you?"

Caroline's gaze drifted to his mouth for maybe a split second. In that fraction of time, she felt his hand tighten on hers, and when she lifted her attention back to his eyes, he was close, looking likewise at her mouth.

_Oh my god._

She shot up and made herself busy internally straight-jacketing her emotions, so fast she didn't really have time to work out what she was actually feeling. She sniffed and plucked the zip to wrestle it down the teeth, but it just wasn't working. Tugging it until it bit into her knuckle bone made her realize that she hadn't worn this dress in a long time with good reason. It never came off without a fight.

"Besides, I think it should be up to me, what kind of friend I think you have been," he said, taking her nervous hands away to pull the zip taut and get it undone without hint of a struggle. She thanked him under her breath. "I have enjoyed you being here. You've made me look forward to seeing you. That is by definition a friendship; it may alarm you to know how few I have of those."

She laughed to spite her horrible mood, turning her attention downward.

There was a moment of quiet, and then her grateful:

"Thank you for feeding me."

"You're welcome," he said fondly. "Can I expect you at breakfast tomorrow?"

"If you want."

"Of course I do," he said clearly. He reached out to touch her shoulder, eyes flicking to the bite on her throat. Was it her imagination, or did his mouth twist in disapproval? "Same time as usual, Caroline. If you need me, please call."

"Okay," she said, and reached up to squeeze his hand. How was he so knowledgeable about emotions when it looked like he didn't have any? "You're so-!... Thanks, Elijah."

"Any time, sweetheart," he soothed, and hesitated for a second. Probably at the kick in her heartbeat at the endearment. Because damn. His mouth? That name? Made her knees a little wobbly.

It was only a second, but she sensed what his internal conflict was about. She beat him to making the decision, pulling him into a tight hug, her arms around his shoulders in fists, nose hovering just above his stiff collar.

If she thought his shirt had smelled expensive, his actual scent was of royal caliber. He was a mix of his fragrant cologne and subtle shampoo, carefully laundered clothes and his own underlying smell.

"I'll be a better friend," she promised him.

His hands settled on her shoulders, at first quite passively. When it became apparent she wasn't letting him go, he smoothed them over to encompass her firmly, pulling her in tight enough that her toes lifted from the ground.

When he left with a murmured goodnight, she faced the wardrobe to see only Klaus' soft t-shirt to sleep in. The thought of that was so daunting she really considered just going to bed in her underwear.

As she went to climb in, however, the folded up button down lay neatly beside her pillow. She wasn't sure if Elijah had known her eventual dilemma or if had been left merely as an ode to 'you ruined my perfectly good shirt and now I can't wear it', but she pulled it on over her head and was sound asleep within the next few minutes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews feed the author


	3. Oh Boy

"Okay honey, spill," Cheryl said, looking over her spectacles at her.

"Spill what?" Distracted, Caroline searched the shelves for the last names beginning with KOW, books managed on her hip. She was only up to K from the returns pile, and it was nearly time to knock off. It had been hectic all day with people, for some reason. Why did New Orleanians love physical books so much? God.

Get. An. iPad.

"You've been so quiet Jeremy didn't even know you were at work today," she said with a grin framed by happy smile lines. "You've been preoccupied. Is it that man that was in here the other week?"

"Who?"

"The one who carried you around." She motioned to the rec room. "The one in the suit."

She found Kowell. Next was Kowet. She scanned the shelves again.

"His brother and I are a thing," she explained as succinctly as she could.

"So he's single?"

"Yeah?" She put the book away and glanced at her boss. "He's pretty single, I guess."

"He looked at you like you hung the moon," Cheryl told her. "What's his brother like?"

"Moody," Caroline said easily. She was looking at the shelves like she was trying to put the books away, but the truth of it was she couldn't look at the gleam in her boss' eyes without feeling somewhat judged. "He's not talking to me right now."

"Oh, why not?"

"Because," she said simply.

"Is he attractive, like that last one?" she pressed. "Is he bigger, or taller? _Strong_ like that one in the suit?"

"Yes," she tried to be absent from the conversation. It wasn't like Cheryl to pry. But then again, Elijah had that effect on people, letting them know he was some version of interesting or dangerous or powerful in the way he carried himself. Caroline forgot what three letter combo she was up to and started again.

"Bigger?"

"Maybe not as broad? I can't really tell under the suit. They're similar. Equally strong, I think," she muttered aimlessly. "Elijah's graceful."

"Elijah's your boyfriend?"

"Elijah is the one you met the other week. Klaus is -... Well he's not my _boyfriend_. I don't know. He's just... my Klaus."

"It isn't serious, though?" the old lady pressed. Apparently the answer took too long to formulate, because she went on: "Are you living with them, still? Didn't you live with them, for a little while?"

"I did," she said quickly. "But seeing as I'm kind of just creating a big dark cloud in that place, I'm back at mine."

"Even after the break-in?"

Caroline glanced at her so sharply her neck cracked. Cheryl seemed to stiffen up, but stared back at her through her thick spectacles, blinking hugely.

"How did you know about that?" Caroline asked slowly. "I didn't tell anyone about that."

"Oh, no, you didn't," the lady said with a tittering laugh. It made Caroline's teeth set on edge, the harsh falsetto of it. "But these city walls have ears, dear. Was it your apartment they broke into? I knew it was your building."

Caroline just kind of stared, for a moment. Something weird was happening. Klaus had dealt with it. He had dealt with things like that for a thousand years. He didn't just do loose ends.

"How'd you hear about it?" she asked again.

"Well," Cheryl said simply. "There was four men that went and did it, and my son's friend Aleesha from poker, her new girlfriend, one of them is her brother. Apparently he ate some pasta and then left?"

"And that just...?" Caroline waved a book around. "Got back to you through the New Orleans grapevine?"

"Nothing quite like it," the lady tittered.

Caroline looked back at her books and had absolutely no idea what the fuck was going on. Something was super weird, here, but she couldn't formulate a thought about what it was. Only that this conversation was making her feel hivey. She shoved a book in a random place just for something to do with her hands.

"So you haven't been talking to him for a while?" Cheryl went on. "Your not-boyfriend Klaus?"

"About a week," she said.

"What happened?"

_Oh, he brutally slaughtered one of the nicest people I've ever met and he still hasn't apologized. _

She looked at her boss then, who was staring at her without blinking, her withered hands held in front of her chest like a raccoon's. Both sets of fingers were pinched as though holding something, nursed right in the center of her sternum. Her nails were painted a soft pink, sheer enough that Caroline could make out the dark line of dirt in a semi circle beneath the nail tip.

"Sorry, Cheryl," she said quietly. "This is just a really weird conversation to be having. It's kind of sensitive right now..."

"Why weird?" she said with a curl of her lip. "It's just us girls!"

Caroline wasn't sure if the woman would understand that they weren't friends that way. She had been lovely to work for, but today had been a strange day. The lady seemed off, in a maybe nervous, maybe _too focused_ kind of way. In her mind, Caroline rationalized that she was probably just trying to be friendly, to keep up with her youth in the love life drama that someone else had. Maybe she was trying to be a shoulder to lean on?

Caroline checked her watch to see only fifteen minutes left in her shift.

"I've made you uncomfortable," Cheryl said quickly. "I'm sorry, dear. It won't happen again. Did you wanna clock off early?"

"Uhm." Since when would she offer that? "It's okay. I have a lot of books to get through before Jane comes in to do them tomorrow, so I don't want to leave her with them all."

"Of course," the lady cooed. Was she standing like, super close? "Whatever you like."

Caroline did see out her last fifteen minutes working, speeding through as many returns as she could, checking the spines and the inside covers for damage. She didn't find a single one, but then again she had from L onward to check, not to mention the influx that would come in tomorrow.

Jane did menial jobs, but the repairs were Caroline's forte. So whatever Jane caught would be left for Caroline to deal with in two days, which would already amount to probably a full day of work, and off set the delicate shared nature of their jobs.

She said goodbye to everyone as a whole instead of the individual people just to avoid having to talk to Cheryl, and walked the few blocks between there and her house. She stopped in to get take-out; some chicken lo mein and spare fried rice for tomorrow's lunch.

While she waited for the food, she texted Elena:

_Omg I think my boss is hot for Elijah_

Elena called her back, her voice weirdly rough and thick.

"_Elijah as in Mikealson, Elijah? Why does your boss know him?_"

"Woah, you sound terrible," Caroline said, wedging her phone between her ear and shoulder to take the bags from the man behind the counter. "Thank you!"

He gave her a cheerful farewell and she snagged some extra chopsticks on her way out, dropping them on top of the containers.

"_Yeah. Things... things are..._" There was a pause. "_I kissed Damon_."

"_What_?" Caroline whisper-shrieked. She had completely, _idiotically_ forgotten that no one outside of New Orleans knew that Caroline had been (not dating? Seeing? Sleeping with? Ignoring?) Klaus, and spending most of her time with his noble brother. "What _happened_?"

"_It was an accident_," Elena said desperately. "_We were - we were both just hanging out, you know? I hurt my ankle the other day and he was rubbing it better. And he'd had a few drinks and he was - you know what he's like, Caroline-_"

"Yeah, I know, all hungry eyes and pouty mouth, go on," Caroling encouraged. She'd known that pouty mouth pretty well. He was like top two in her Best Kissers list. (Klaus was no. 1).

"_And I - I know it isn't an excuse but I was kinda drunk. Not drunk enough that I couldn't, you know - I knew it was him. I knew it was Damon. And he was rubbing my ankle and I had my skirt on and I just-... I told him my leg hurt and he moved up_." There was a palpable guilt in her throat and Caroline hated it on her behalf. The feeling of dread boiled in her belly, and she bit her lip to keep quiet. "_Up to my calf, then my knee. And then I-... sat on him.._."

"Elena..."

"_I know_," she whispered. "_I started it. I did. I know. And then I told him to keep going._"

"Oh my god," Caroline muttered.

"_I know, I just - it was like - I couldn't stop once his hands were on me, I-.._."

"Were you spelled?" Caroline said quickly. "Have you asked Bonnie?"

"_Bonnie said there was no spell like that, to make me want him_," Elena said, her throat wobbly. "_She said nature doesn't comply with forcing sex._"

"Did you sleep with him?!"

"_No!_" Elena defended. "_No! I just sat on his lap and - and I kissed him - and maybe I ripped open his shirt... And let him pull off mine..._"

"Hot," Caroline paid her.

"_I let him kiss every thing,_" she lamented. "_I didn't want to stop_."

"He is pretty good," Caroline recalled.

"_But then..._" Elena trailed off into a whisper. "_It got worse_."

"How could it possibly get worse?"

"_It got gentle,_" Elena cleared her throat, the sound of her words coming through a thick was of regret. "_Emotional. It was so easy and... and passionate and... the way we were moving together was like - like we'd done it a thousand times._"

"Gentle is worse," Caroline agreed.

"_So much worse,_" Elena said. She sniffed. "_There's been this stupid cat that hangs around and it knocked over a glass and I like - woke up out of it. I panicked. I tried to like - run out of there and my ankle hurt so bad and - Damon tried to catch me, and he kept trying to calm me down, but... I punched him in the face_."

"Oh, good."

"_And then I hobbled the fuck out of there and now... Now I've kissed Damon. And I knew better. And there's no spell to blame. I just wanted to. I started it.._." 

"Oh-kayyy," Caroline said slowly. "Okay. Okay. This is - this is fine, we can deal with this, this is fine..."

"_Can you please just tell me what we're both thinking?_" she pleaded.

"Which would be...?"

"_I'm a whore._"

"You are not a whore. It was just a kiss, calm down."

"_With Stefan's brother?_" she sounded repulsed by her own actions. "_Ugh, Caroline, just say it. Just tell me how gross I am_."

"You aren't gross," Caroline said patiently. "Babe, you made a mistake. Damon had to kiss you back, and he's the brother of the boyfriend, here, okay? This thing is a two way street. You don't see me calling Damon gross - and he's the one who should know better, at his age, jeeze."

"_No, I should. She said it to me when I saw her last. Katherine. She said she loved them both_," Elena went on, and started to choke up. "_That it was okay if I loved them both. What if I do?_"

"Katherine doesn't know how to love any one other than herself," Caroline pointed out.

Feeling a prickle on the back of her neck, she glanced over her shoulder. It wasn't late, but it was nearly past the point of common sense to be out. The sun was hidden behind the buildings but not yet set beyond the horizon, so the city was glowing in orange light. People were still out and about, though there was very little foot traffic.

Caroline faced forward and hitched her shoulder bag up a little higher.

_"Would you hate me?_" Elena whispered.

"No," was her immediate reply, followed by: "For what?"

"_If I loved them both?_" Elena's breath was shuddering and it made Caroline's eyes feel hot with sympathetic tears. She dug in her bag to get her keys out and unlocked her door with a little struggle.

"No, Elena, I wouldn't hate you. And I don't doubt you _do_ love them both."

"_But what if I want to be with them both?_" Elena's voice was watery and small. "_What if I don't want to choose?_"

"What do you mean?" Caroline pressed the button to call the elevator, then thought better of it. Elena was having some kind of emotional breakdown and the elevator reception could be spotty - nothing more awkward than mid-way through a confession and having the phone line cut. She turned to the stairs and hoped she wouldn't be too out-of-breath to talk.

_"I mean.._." It was like she weighed her words and found every version of what she wanted to say wanting. The pause was so long Caroline called her name just to check she hadn't dropped the connection. "_I'm still here. I'm just thinking_."

"Over-thinking?" Caroline guessed. She was up one flight of stairs. Only two more to go. "Are you... Can I just guess and you correct me if it doesn't sound right?"

"_Yeah."_

"You want to be with them both like boyfriends..." she started, but didn't know how to finish it off. She let the accusation hang between them for a while. Half a flight of steps, to be precise.

"_Maybe_," Elena confirmed. "_I don't-... I don't know. I just - I think I love them both. They both mean different things to me. They cover... they cover so much ground between them. They know my mind, they know my heart. I don't want to choose. Choosing feels... Choosing feels wrong. So why can't I have both?"_

"Okay," Caroline said soothingly. It had clearly been a _Day_ for Elena, because there was no conceivable way that Stefan Over-Protective and Damon Jealous Salvatore would ever willfully share anything, let alone a whole ass person. "Hey, where are you right now?"

"_I'm at home_," Elena's voice went pitchy at the end. Her house hadn't been home in a long time, and that Caroline knew once her mother had died. Home was truly where your heart was. Elena's heart, maybe caught between two men, wasn't in her house. "_I had to leave. I couldn't look at either of them."_

"Does Stefan know?"

_"I'll tell him tomorrow,"_ Elena said with promise. "_If Damon hasn't already._"

"Okay," Caroline said again, because what else could she say? Out of the two of them, if Caroline had to pick who would cheat, it was never going to be Elena. "Will you call me and let me know what happens?"

"_Yeah._" She sniffed into the phone. "_Anyway. You sent a text about Elijah. As in, the Original, Elijah?"_

"Uhm-!" She was one flight away from getting to her apartment. Her breath was already starting to struggle in her throat. She tried to think of an excuse to hang up the phone, but then fought against the urge. Elena was her best friend, who was having her own love life drama. Surely she'd understand. "Okay, don't freak out or anything..."

"_Not a great way to start a conversation if you didn't want me to freak out,_" Elena said, audibly blowing her nose away from the receiver. She sniffed, and sighed. "_Alright. Hit me. What's going on?_"

Caroline wasn't sure where to start. It'd be risky explaining the whole story from when she called him because her place had been broken into, when she was in the building. Not to mention poor Rich, who people still didn't know the truth of. Hell, Caroline didn't really know the truth, there. She only knew Klaus was responsible, because she had made him responsible. So... She was at fault.

"Long story short?" she said. "I got into some trouble with some bad guys and I called Klaus for an assist."

Elena took in a deep breath, fortifying.

"_And now he's in your life again,_" she murmured.

"Well-!" Caroline laughed. She had to. It was a cosmic joke how easily she'd settled into his world, but how easily she'd walked away from it, too. "It was going great for a little while!"

"_You can drop the cheerleader voice_," Elena cautioned. "_It hasn't worked on me for like four years_."

Caroline got out her keys and unlocked her door. She relocked it behind her and dumped her food on the bench, taking a grateful seat on her couch. She toed off her shoes and tipped her head back on the backrest, staring at the roof.

"It was so easy," she confessed. "I really needed him. I needed them both. He and Elijah. I got scared for a long time and being around them made me feel good, and safe. Elijah... Elijah came to my work and I ended up - like, I didn't faint, but he was there to look after me. He keeps me fed. And then Klaus-... He keeps me occupied. I didn't... for like two weeks - I didn't think life could be good that way. It was the best I'd felt since mom."

"_Oh_," Elena said softly.

"Yeah," she said, shutting her eyes. "He was nearly perfect. We didn't even fight that much since Elijah always sort of interfered and kept us level-headed. But it came to a head a week ago and I guess I'm not worth chasing around any more."

"_What happened?_"

"He did something shitty and hasn't apologized for it," Caroline said, her tone sharp. "And so I was living with them but he just like, went AWOL so I thought maybe... Maybe he didn't want me. And even though I kinda hate him right now, I couldn't make their place so hostile to be petty bitch numero uno. So now I'm back at my place. I kind of-... I don't _kind of_. I miss it. I miss them. I don't feel safe here anymore."

Elena was quiet on the other end of the line, and Caroline found that she had nothing else to say. What could be said? Klaus was dangerous, but so were Damon and Stefan.

"_Did you stop eating?_" Elena said thoughtfully.

Caroline swallowed.

"Yeah."

"_And Elijah caught it?_"

"Yeah."

"_Good_." There was another pause. _"I miss you so much right now."_

"I miss you too," she worried. "Do you want me to come over?"

"_I might need to get out of this town,_" she muttered. "_I might need to come and see you, I think. I'll let you know after tomorrow happens._"

"I'll send you my address," Caroline assured her. "And if I don't get back to you, it's because I'm at the cafe and my manager is so strict with phones. Just come over and I'll leave a key somewhere."

"_It's been ages since I saw you,_" Elena pointed out. "_Was that on purpose? Have you been eating?_"

"I'm getting better," she acknowledged, because something about admitting how little food she consumed made her nervous. She glanced over at dinner on the counter. "But you should see how much I plan to pack away tonight."

After a small conversation about the logistics of travelling to New Orleans - Caroline checked up on Bonnie through Elena, and found out she was apparently head over ass for this guy Enzo - and made sure Matty and Jeremy were all well and good, Caroline bid her a goodnight with a reminder to text regardless of if she was coming or not.

With the TV on but not really knowing what was on, she sent Elena the address and instructed her to go to Joyce's apartment and use the spare key. She also sent a message to Joyce to let her know it was happening, and got a series of thumbs up emojis in reply.

* * *

She had a quick shower, feeling a little nervous to be naked and vulnerable in her apartment. She'd been there for five full nights, but tonight she was getting twitchy. She shut the bedroom door behind her and crawled into bed, plugging in her phone and flipping open to messages.

She sent Elijah:

_Is he still sulking?_

He replied within the minute:

_Don't let it bother you. _

_Sulk is his default._

She sent:

_I thought his default was paranoid murderous rampage?_

He replied:

_That's what he wants you to think. ;)_

To spite her mood, and for the benefit of precisely no one, she smiled. She hovered her thumbs over the keys and just thought about what she wanted to say. She typed out-

_I wish we weren't NOT fighting,_ but corrected it to _I miss being around you guys_. When that didn't feel right either, she back spaced and meant to type_ I miss you making my breakfast._ Because she did, first of all, but second of all was the part of the breakfast where they chatted and just existed together without any bad mojo, and third of all it was light hearted, fun. He was probably gonna poke fun at her for not being half as good a chef as she thought she was.

His reply made her heart clench for a second, a frown damaging the smile that had impressed on her cheek.

_I wish you were here, sweetheart._

Why did that make her whole body go... _Woah_? She swallowed a hard mouthful and just stared at it, trying to figure out if he'd misspoken. Although Elijah misspeaking was probably up there with the likelihood of Klaus apologizing, she blinked until she realized her last sent message.

It had not been _I miss you making my breakfast_. Something had clearly misfired between brain and hands, because what she sent was:

_I miss you._

And he'd said:

_I wish you were here, sweetheart._

What the fuck...?

What the fuck?

What the actual fuck?

She licked her lips. What would she say to that?

_Sorry, didn't mean it_, was a bit rough, and not true, because she actually did really miss him.

_Thanks for being nice_, sounded patronizing.

_Whoops, hit sent too early! _sounded about right.

_Then why did you seal it with a full stop? _said Katherine's drawl in her head.

Why could she hear the lilt of his voice as he said it, too? The deep undertones marred by too many spoken languages? Why could she see the twinkle in his dark eyes, and feel the warmth spreading in her cheeks at the thought of being missed by someone like him?

She rolled onto her back, phone on her chest, and just thought, for a long second. There was so many things she could've said. But none of them quite fit what she wanted, which was to hear him say something nice again.

She was a sucker for _nice_, okay. Klaus was passionate, he was firey, he got under her skin, he made her see stars and feel fire. He did not do _nice_.

Elijah, though... Elijah did nice. Elijah did nice very well.

It had been seven minutes for her to chase that thought around in her head, when she next looked at the messages. Seeing it there, that written _sweetheart_, it made her heart seize and her mouth dry. Surely he meant it in that Dad way he did things. Like with the 'breakfast is the most important meal of the say' business, and the whole 'I'm not asking, I'm telling you', shtick he had the last time she refused to eat. _Sweetheart _was just a way for him to note the sweetness of her heart. Right? He was just being his old world self. It was affectionate.

She craved affectionate.

Dangerously, she typed in a message, then pressed send. She watched the notification that he'd opened it, and the bubble as he wrote his own reply.

She had sent:

_What do you mean?_

He replied:

_I mean I wish you were here._

And then to clarify:

_With me._

_Oh, boy_, ran through her head, multiple times. _Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. _

She licked her lips again and thought with her rational brain that he did not mean it like a lover. He meant it like a friend. But because she was so... the way she was... she was reading the tone wrong. She was imagining him unbuttoning his collar and loosening his tie. She was imagining him with his eyes half lidded, legs spread as he took an ungraceful seat on the sofa in the lounge. She imagined him disheveled, waiting for her reply.

It had been... too many days since her last orgasm. That was what she was thinking. That was why, at the first sign of any male attention, she decided to slip her free hand into her shorts and settle a finger on either side of her clit, giving a slow rub when she read the word _sweetheart_.

_I wish I was there with you_, she sent him. Thinking that she'd regret everything in the light of day - but that was tomorrow's problem - she added: _What would we be doing if I was?_

Now she would see. He'd say something charming like: _We'd be watching Friends before a snack and bed_. Or: _Probably arguing with Niklaus over trivial nonsense._ Maybe he'd even say: _Likely discussing what you did at work today_.

But what he said was:

_I'd be holding you._

_It isn't sexual, _she tried to remind herself._ He's just being nice. _Her heart thumped so loudly she could feel it resonating like a drum in her chest. What the fuck was happening in her underwear? Why was she letting it happen? Holy shit. Oh boy.

_I need that right now, _she informed him.

_You needed it when you were here last, _he corrected. _I should've held you then, the way I want to now._

And honestly? She could've just sent: _That sounds nice :)_ like she had been planning to. She was going to cut it short. What ended up happening was that he sent her another message, and her theories that he was just _being nice_ kind of got majorly busted.

_You'd be wearing the shirt I left in your room,_ he went on. _And I'd be feeling the way it fits over your body. _

_A shame I never saw it._

A terrible thought flitted through her mind. What if it wasn't Elijah? What if Klaus had his phone? What if this was some kind of backwards test.

_Where would you be feeling? _she sent, before she lost the nerve.

Klaus wanted to be a dick and play ball? Curve ball.

_Over your back. _

_Your pretty little waist._

_The rise of your ribs._

_Around your soft stomach._

She dragged her hand out of her shorts to mimic it as the texts lit up her phone, starting from her waist and rubbing over her side and down again. She was starting to breathe a little deeper, her heart demanding the extra oxygen.

There was no way he could misconstrue the next message she sent. If she was going to confirm he knew what he was doing to her on this side of the phone, it would be in reply to what she would say.

_I want you to touch my nipples,_ she sent.

_Don't be impatient_, he chided.

Holy shit.

They were actually... doing this. The sexting thing.

Holy _shit_.

She rubbed up to her breasts and ran her nails over the sensitive skin around her areolas through her sleep shirt. She was still biting her lip and she knew from the thickness of it she'd made it swollen. She tried to even out her breathing and it didn't work.

She sent:

_Are you alone?_

He simply replied:

_In bed._

So she got a snap of her peaked nipples through her soft cotton shirt, and the swell of a truly bitten bottom lip. She made sure he could see the things she knew he would appreciate for having turned her on, and then pressed send before she did something stupid, like came to her senses.

Waiting, even for those few second after she saw he'd received it, was agonizing.

_Not fair, Caroline,_ he warned her.

_You could always return the favor,_ she goaded.

_I'm a little old to be sending saucy pictures, don't you think?_

She giggled to herself.

_If I was there right now... _she sent.

_I'd be holding you,_ he reminded her. _Although I have the impression you'd not want to be patient and let me. So I suppose I'd be holding you down._

The idea that he would restrain her made her heart jump. Yes. That was a yes. She liked that. She liked to struggle against that. He'd never hurt her, by any stretch of the imagination, but he'd make her wait. 

Oh boy.

_Would you let me touch you?_ she fired back.

_It isn't about me, _he told her.

_Well I want to touch you_, she sent.

_Then I'll hold your hands above your head, _he said simply. _I'll sit between your thighs and feel the way my clothes fit on you until I'm satisfied. _

_I'm taking my time. _

_There's no rush._

Yes there damn well was. She rubbed over her stomach, up to her breast, and squeezed one in her own hand, imagining it was his. She shut her eyes and exhaled a breathy noise, feeling the touch of pain in the clamp of her grip.

To get the party going, she sent him a photo of her clawed hand on her tit, the other nipple standing proud under her shirt, down to the slip of skin of her belly from the hike of the hem. She missed the send button twice before she hit it.

_Naughty_, he sent her back.

_You can't stop me from all the way over there_, she taunted.

Her heart was in her throat. She got a hand under her shirt to press it up around her collarbone, freeing her tits to the night air. She kicked down the blankets and crossed her arm over her chest to hide her swollen nipples, then sent a photo of herself from the smirk down.

It was flattering, considering the angle, the low light, and the smush of her boobs as she pressed them together. She stared at her phone screen and shifted her hips on the bed, hand tugging on her nipples while she waited.

He called her.

That sneaky fucker.

It was kind of crossing a line, maybe. That was why she hesitated. But her dumb thumb swiped on the green button and she pressed the phone to her ear.

"_You have to be more patient_," was the first thing he said, throatily, down the line. He sounded fondly exasperated, and she cringed to still think of him in that severe dad-mode. But like... it was doing something, so...

"I'm still wearing my panties," she said breathily. "That is my version of being patient."

"_If you were here,_" he told her softly. "_I'd have you over my knee for the disrespect._"

She suspected he could hear the gulp, and the shuddering breath she released, even though both were very quiet. She squeezed her own breast again and rubbed her swollen buds.

"That wouldn't stop me for long," she teased.

"_It would,_" he promised her.

"I've been spanked. How is the way you do it any different?" she demanded.

"_Oh, you think you've been spanked?_" he said with good humor. "_You think that because some little whelp of a boy has put his hands on you for the sound of it, you've been shown what it's like?_"

"I've taken a crop before," she challenged him. "I don't mind a little bit of pain."

"_That,_" he murmured. "_Is interesting_."

"You don't think I'm anything but vanilla, don't you?" 

"_I think you should be spoiled absolutely rotten, in time,_" he said lightly. "_Which is why I'd have you pinned under one hand, that I could touch your body, and keep you locked down while I took my time with you. If you struggle with me, Caroline, I'll make you wait longer. Or spank you until you're red raw and swearing you'll be a good girl for me._"

She let out a low 'oooh!' the way she did in high school when someone was called to the principal's office. A mockery of trouble.

"But in this situation, if you're pinning me down and sitting between my legs," she told him. "I'm gonna rub against your cock, whether it's in me or not."

He sighed.

"_I knew you'd test me,_" he murmured.

"Is that why you want me?" she accused.

"_I want to look after you_," he confirmed. "_You being my exact type was a happy coincidence_."

"What is your type?" she mused.

"_Difficult and needy,_" he said easily.

"I'm not _needy_!"

"_You said yourself that you were needy, amongst other things I include in the general banner of my type,_" he enunciated every word very carefully in his accented tongue. "_You know you're stubborn_."

"Yeah, so?"

"_So I like that_," he said coolly. "_I like the neediness, too_."

"I can be," she said self-importantly. "Independent."

"_I know_," he soothed her slightly dinged ego. "_That doesn't stop me from wanting to look after you in my own way_."

"I don't need looking after," she protested.

"_No?_" he mused. "_Then why did you text me?_"

"Because, we're supposed to be friends," she muttered, and put her phone on loudspeaker, just beside her head. She put both breasts in her hands and squeezed. "Elijah, come on. Let's not ruin the mood."

"_You told me you missed me,_" he said. "_That was the mood you started._"

"I do miss you," she realized. "I miss you making me feel safe."

"_Shall I come and get you? We can stop. Do you want to stop?_"

The thing was, she would have loved the offer like, an hour ago, when she was jumpy and nervous about getting into her shower. She had checked the entire house with her taser in hand, but nothing was there. It was just her overall vibe, now, to be anxious in this apartment.

But now, with the shift of mood between them... it might be weird to see him, knowing what they were apparently one misunderstood text away from. She dug her heels into her bed and turned to put her mouth close to the speaker.

"Can I touch myself?" she said, hand skimming over the soft swell of her belly.

He paused, as though he was considering trying to argue the obvious deflection from his earlier question. Instead of pressing, he asked:

"_Are you not already doing so?_"

"Uh uh," she said, and swallowed again, full breathing from her mouth now. Her breath was coming in too rapidly to try her nose, and she knew he could hear it. "I'm- I'm playing with my tits. And I'm... I'm just rubbing my stomach. I haven't touched myself below the belly button... yet."

"_Good girl_," he said warmly, and she slammed her eyes shut, letting his voice fill her ear. It gave her goosebumps all over, that voice, coupled with that sentiment. "_Do you like that, Caroline?_"

"Yeah."

"_You like it when I tell you you're a good girl?_"

She let go of a shaky breath.

"Am I that obvious?"

"_I only see it because I've been looking for it_," he placated her. "_Don't fret_."

"It's so embarrassing..." she said sheepishly.

"_Praise?_" he cooed. "_There's nothing wrong with liking praise._"

She felt heat creep into her neck.

"You didn't tell me," she reminded him. "Can I touch myself?"

"_Not yet._"

"Please?"

"_Not yet_," he firmed his tone. "_Pull on your nipples for me_."

"Yes," she agreed breathily, doing it with both at the same time. She arched her neck and squirmed on the bed, her legs bent at the knee, open like he could just slide in there and fill her if he was so inclined.

"_Now,_" he said soothingly. "_If you were here, and being made to wait, I would start to unbutton the shirt because you're being so good. Every button I undo earns you a kiss. There are seven buttons on that shirt - where do you want me to kiss you first?_"

"Mouth," she blurted. "I want to taste you."

"_When you tell me where you want me,_" he said evenly. "_I want you to touch. Press your fingers to your mouth, sweetheart. Deliver the kisses you want._"

She did as he asked, pursing her lips to her fingertips. It wasn't enough. She angled the back of her hand to her lip and kissed that instead, breathing rushed through her nose.

"_Where do you want the rest?_" he murmured.

"Cheek. Throat. Tits." She trailed her fingers over her cheek and could almost convince herself she felt him hovering just above her, his kind lips tickling her skin. She rolled her head to the side to open up room for the gentle touch, then skipped her chest to pull on her nipples a little harder than she would normally.

She made a breathless noise at the singing of pain in her nerves, heard him shifting in his blankets. She imagined him stroking his cock, and wondered what it looked like. Would it be long, with that thick vein beneath, like Klaus'? When he came inside her, she could feel the pulse of it.

"I lost count."

"_You have two more_," he murmured.

"Does sucking count?"

"_No..._" he said slowly.

"Would you suck on my nipples?" She gave one a sharp twist and couldn't bite back a mewl. "Would you leave a mark on my throat?"

"_Would you like that?_" he said softly. "_To be marked by my mouth?_"

"Yes," she said urgently.

_"Knowing full well that anyone could see?" _

She knew by 'anyone', he meant one person. His brother. Of whom she was (not dating!)

"I want them to see," she whispered. "I want you to hurt me, just a little."

_"Just a little,"_ he repeated as though in a daze.

"Are you-?" she stuttered for a moment. "Are you stroking yourself?"

_"I'm playing, yes,"_ he said agreeably. _"I'm completely hard. I have been since the first photo you sent. That was cheeky."_

"You were taking too long," she lamented.

_"Spend your two other kisses," _he said._ "And we'll continue."_

She wet her lip.

"I want both on my clit," she said, and reached down.

_"Don't you dare,"_ he instructed and she groaned in frustration. _"Did you touch?_"

"No," she said, grumpily.

_"Spend them above the waist,"_ he said firmly.

"You never said that before."

"_I'll wait,_" he said simply, and she knew that he would too. The asshole.

She dallied to decide and at least inconvenience him a little, humming and ahhing in thought, all the while stroking her entire torso. She was so worked up when she scraped nails over the side of her ribs, she made an audible noise of pleasure.

"_Where?_" he said.

"My side," she confessed. "My ribs. I used nails so... you would use teeth."

"_Just a little_," he promised her.

God her panties were wet. She shifted on the bed and told him:

"You're gonna kiss my throat again. A long one. Suck it hard. Let me... let me rub against you, through my panties, while you're there. Just-... Just a touch. Let me."

He sighed, put upon.

"_Rub over your shorts,_" he murmured.

She let out a long breath, and did it, fingers rolling in circles. The material was abrasive and a little too rough for her desperate pressure, but it was addictive, and she hissed through her teeth.

"_Enough,_" he instructed.

"No." She felt a thrill rocket through her system.

"_Caroline_," he lowered his baritone. "_Hands above your head_."

"No," she retorted again, massaging her tit in one hand and her damp shorts in the other. "What are you gonna do, stop me?"

She moved her chest up as though she could feel the weight of him above her, feel his gaze on her chest. She opened her eyes but she was alone in her dark room, trying to get off through her clothes.

"_If I have to come down there, I will,_" he warned, and she giggled nervously. "_And when I get in there, you're going over my knee._"

"You're obsessed with spanking me," she accused.

"_You lack discipline,_" he said firmly.

"Oh, and what? You hitting my ass would make me behave?" she scoffed. "Puh-lease. The second you let me up from your lap I'm gonna sit on your cock, and then I win."

"_I wouldn't just hit your ass while I had you,_" he promised her dangerously. "_I'd break up the time between the punishment and the pleasure. You think you can't wait to touch yourself now? Your hands would be bound behind your back; your wet little quim up in the air for me to play with as I please. Maybe I'll spank you there, in between getting my fingers dripping with the taste of you. Any amount of trying to encourage my touch within you would result in another round of spanking. I can keep you on the very edge of an orgasm for hours, if I feel you steal one from me._"

She trembled at the thought. It wasn't something she considered a punishing treatment... going through that would be the most divine kind of hellish. She wanted to offer him the come down and get off before he could walk in the door.

But doing that would mean acknowledging this twist in their friendship with pesky things like eye contact.

She stretched up her hands and took in a deep breath to calm down her spasming heart.

"My hands," she said, voice pitchy. "Are above my head."

"_There's my good girl_," he encouraged and she felt her heart wobble at the deliciousness of it. It felt wrong, in a way, but god... it was a tasty kind of wrong.

"Fuck," she said suddenly. "I want to taste you. I want - I want you to fuck my mouth."

He hissed a breath through his teeth.

"_You evidently need a gag,_" he muttered. "_I suppose we can kill two birds with one stone_."

"I want-" she bit her lip. "Can you send me a photo?"

_"Of?_"

"You know what of," she retorted. "I wanna see what I'm working with here."

"_I'm sure I'd need an incentive,_" he mused. 

The joke was on him, she was already half way to wriggling her panties to her knees, and lit up the room with a flash of her underwear. The smear of her juices completely soaked the material, and she pressed send before putting the phone on her chest.

"_Oh, Caroline..._" he murmured, which is how she knew he'd gotten it. _"Fuck, sweetheart."_

"Oh my god," she groaned. "Your voice when you say that..."

_"You like when I swear?"_

"The-" she felt her cheeks fill with color. She was embarrassed to admit it, but she was high on the hormones that flooded her higher brain functions, so she just blurted what she liked. "The other thing."

_"Sweetheart,"_ he realized.

"I might-... that might've been... when you texted me, I-..." she swallowed. "I like it."

"_I'll keep it in mind,_" he sounded amused.

Her phone vibrated and she opened the message quickly, her mouth popping open at the sight of his proud cock standing tall. It was held at the base by his fingers and thumb, legs slightly spread beyond the realm of what she was actually interested in. It had been covered in what she guessed was spit, the flared head red and weeping only slightly. He was thicker than she had expected from being with Klaus, not as veiny, but with neatly trimmed, dark curls just beyond his grip.

She swore and put it beside her on the pillow.

"_I'm not as long as Klaus is_," he mentioned off-handedly.

"But you're thicker," she noted.

"_Yes_," he agreed. "_Which is why you need to be more patient, so I don't hurt you when I get around to filling you up._"

"Honestly?" she teased. "It might be worth it."

"_Not to me_," he assured her. "_Put your hands back on your tits. Play._"

She did as he asked, plucking her nipples, rolling her fingers down into each breast, eyes sliding shut again. Now she knew what his dick looked like, thinking about fucking it came more easily to her.

"Please tell me I get to touch myself now," she murmured.

_"Do you have any toys?" _

She cracked open her eyes.

"Two."

_"What are they like?"_

"Uhm-" she thought about them, laying in her bottom drawer, beneath all the ugly gym clothes she owned. "They're both... I can put them in me. None are as big as you. They vibrate. One... There's a butterfly on one of them."

_"That's fine,_" he cooed. "_Get one that you like the best_."

She hustled to obey. The one that filled her hand first was a modest six incher, with a malleable core, blue glitter with no butterfly. She dipped it down between her lips, and hummed.

"Can I put it in?"

"_Not yet_," he said patiently. "Y_our mouth first. You need a gag, sweetheart, and I want to hear you sucking_."

"Yes," she said, and lifted the toy to her lips, wisely choosing not to mention where it had been moments before. She sucked just the tip, and then most of the head, moving it over her tongue, sparing none of the suction noises it made to go in and out of her mouth.

"_Good girl,_" he said in her ear, and to let him know she appreciated it, she moaned around the cock in her mouth. "_There's my good girl. Are you still playing with your nipples?"_

She tried to say_ yes_ around the cock and made it heard, at least, but it wasn't at all eloquent. She felt like a hungry savage to his effortlessly sleek Prince. It made her hungrier. She sucked harder, wetter, letting him hear.

"_Now,_" he said. "_Imagine that I'm filling your mouth. I want you to listen and not do anything but suck, and play with your tits. Yes?_"

She agreed around a mouthful.

"_Beautiful_," he murmured down the line. "_Now that I've kissed you, and you've been waiting patiently, I'm going to fuck your mouth. Slow and shallow for me. No gagging. Can you do that?_"

She could, and did, feeling the texture of the smooth latex slide easily over her tongue. It wasn't wet enough with the right kind of lube to slip around, but the drag of it made her think that was his intention.

"_I'm going to stroke your hair,_" he went on gently. "_Run my fingers over your brow, around to your jaw. You're amazing."_

In his end of the receiver, she could actually hear how wet his own fist was, the sound of it slurping as he jacked his own dick. She matched the pace of it almost unintentionally, and he spoke in a different language - maybe swearing. It sounded like swearing.

"_I want to taste you_," he said. "_I want to crawl down your body and kiss you as I go. Tell me where you want me to kiss you."_

She unearthed the dildo from her lips and her eyes rolled shut. She imagined him scooting down to come face to face with her, smelling expensive and the right kind of sweaty, smoothing his fingers over her face like he said.

"Everywhere," she whispered out.

_"Are you touching these places for me?"_

"Y-Yes, d-" she stuttered. She nearly dropped a suspicious 'daddy' on the end of that. Which was a little confusing. "Yes."

_"Good,_" he approved. "_Tell me where as you touch, there's my good girl."_

Oh god that was twisted. He really was dadding her, right? That wasn't just an absentee father thing that she was going through, he was buying into it, wasn't he? It wasn't like he didn't look after her, but this... this was getting screwy. But also... it was the best kind of screwy that she'd been a part of, so...

"You kiss my eyes." She swallowed and tilted her head to catch the next kiss where she wanted it, running her fingers over her face. "My cheek."

_"Of course,_" he said softly.

"How many do I have?"

"_I'll kiss you as many times as you like, Caroline," _he promised her_. "I told you. We're in no rush."_

"No rush," she repeated like an idiot. Klaus was always in a rush, which was great, because so was she. There were a pile of torn clothes between them, a lot of make-shift surfaces she'd been nailed up against or pinned down to. She wondered why both of them ended up being so dominant in bed, then felt her fingers - acting as his mouth, trail to her lips. "Will you bite my lip?"

_"Yes,_" he told her. "_I'm not drawing blood."_

"Okay," she agreed, and dragged her nails into it. "I-... If I was there, I'd... I'd kiss you for a while."

_"Would you?"_

"I'd... I'd want to do it slow but, I'm not - it wouldn't be slow for long."

_"I'd kiss you however you'd like,_" he said softly. "_For as long as you'd like. Where are your hands?"_

"On you." Several different versions of where she'd be touching him flashed into her eyes. She saw her with both buried in his hair, unsettling the neatness of it. She saw one on his chest - she wondered if he had any chest hair, because Klaus didn't - the other on his shoulder in a claw. She saw them dug into his back. She saw herself running her nails over his spine. "In your hair."

"_Pulling?"_

"No," she said quickly. "I'm... just holding on. Do you-...Do you have chest hair?"

"_Yes_," he murmured. She heard a shuffling on his side, a soft voice in a different language. Then her phone vibrated and she scrambled to check it, leaving the dildo on her belly.

She flicked open the message and saw that apparently, Originals are masters of everything. He'd taken a photo from high above himself, just a jaw and a flushed chest leading into a tense torso corded with the straps of muscle from hard labor.

The tip of his dick rested on his bellybutton, the flash of the camera making it look extra wet. He had chest hair pooled in the center of his pecs, and the most delicious looking collarbone. It was a much more severe line than she had been thinking it would be.

"I want to touch you there," she told him, somewhat timidly.

"_Touch me,_" he urged her. "_Touch me all you like._"

He was sweating lightly, she noticed in the picture. She wondered if he was always like that, or if he was just really turned on. She pressed her fingers to her mouth and mimicked the feel of lips.

"You're gonna kiss down my chin," she said, arching her neck. "I'm - I've turned my face so you can kiss me down my throat. And bite me. Just a little."

_"Yes_," he said. The sound of wetness came through his end. His voice, when he next spoke, was a little strangled. _"I'm not going to bite to draw blood._"

"No," she agreed. "Kiss the sharpness away. Use your tongue."

"_I will,_" he promised her.

"Then down to my decolletage. I want you to suck as well. I want... I want you to get your hands on my tits, please." She kind of realized how boring this must be for him, imagining having to kiss her, and only kiss her. She drew in a big breath and said: "Kiss both nipples. Down my belly. Over both hips. And please, please tell me I can touch myself."

"_You got impatient,_" he accused playfully. "_If you were here, Caroline, I'd still be worshiping your throat."_

"But I'm not," she pointed out. "So please tell me I can use this toy, now."

He sighed.

_"Put a finger inside_," he instructed. _"No more than one_."

"I'm wet enough to take more," she protested. "I can take that dildo right now."

"_One_," he repeated.

She bit into her lip.

"What if I do two?" she tested.

"_One,_" he firmed his tone.

"Maybe I didn't hear you right the first time," she said innocently. She slid two fingers into her wetness and hooked them up inside herself, nearly purring at the stretch. It only just took the edge off that basic urge in her to be filled, and she pumped them in and out. "Did you say two?"

"_Caroline,"_ he warned, and it really was full-tilt dad but it was so delicious she mewled and tried to ignore it. "_One. One finger._"

"Are you gonna spank me through the phone?" was what she said in reply. "God, it feels _so good_."

He said her name again, but she just hummed loudly in agreement. He swore and she giggled nervously at his stream of gruttal words, cloaked in an unfamiliar language.

"_Put your hands above your head_," he said.

"No," she taunted. "I have two fingers in and _mmm._ I'm not going down to one. If you want your control back you're just gonna have to catch up."

"_Are you negotiating with me?_" he said, darkly amused.

"This is not a negotiation," she replied simply. "This is me reaching down and undoing your pants."

"_I'm not going to let you do that,_" he chided.

"Yes you are. And you're going to let me shove them just half off your ass. And you're gonna let me take your thick cock in my hand, and rub it through the wetness you stirred up." She took the dildo in her hand and made the head of it run through her accumulated juices, bumping into her clit. She gasped. "I knocked my clit. Fuck. I knocked my clit with you."

"_Caroline_," he warned. "_Slow down._"

"You can't_ make me_," she sing-songed.

There was an inelegant snort on the other end of the line, and it reminded her of Klaus. She giggled a little to spite herself and continued to rub the hard plastic between her folds, up into the sensitive and neglected bundle of nerves to a low groan.

"_So stubborn_," he murmured. "_If you think you aren't going to pay for your disobedience, I should probably correct that now._"

"You're not going to spank me," she scoffed. "Come on."

"_You're working at the cafe tomorrow,"_ he said coolly. "_You think I won't?_"

"You won't," she said with confidence.

"_I'll see you there,"_ he promised her.

And _hung up the fucking phone_.

At first, she looked at her lock screen, and she was like... this is a joke. Right?

But then she was angry. So _angry_! How could he just... leave her hanging!?

But then... oh, then, the little vindictive bitch in her reared her pretty head. Time to _shine_.

She filled herself up with the dildo in one delicious push, eyes shutting at the pleasure of it. She pumped a few times, each one sliding deeper, making more of a mess... and then left the tip braced on her entrance, and slid open her camera, getting a picture of the slick blue shaft hovering just above her mound.

When she looked at that picture later, she would see what he saw, beyond the wet sex toy and suggestive shadow of her sex. The slight blur of the camera, the hasty angle, and her legs bent up and so, so ready to receive.

She sent the photo and then went private mode on her phone, keying in a tried and true favorite video of hers. She screenshotted it, then sent it to him as well.

His reply to seeing her watching a video called: 'Angry daddy punishes young naughty girl w/ Spanking' was simply:

_I'm never angry when I punish, Caroline. I'll see you tomorrow._

She groaned, loaded the video, and came within two minutes of having started it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews feed the author


	4. Oh Okay

The first alarm was jarring enough to wake the dead. So she rolled out of bed and went to gather her apron, green button down, and the black jeans of her uniform - laid out neatly the night before - then swung open her cracked bedroom door and undressed while watching the bathroom.

Hadn't she shut the door the night before?

Or was she just being paranoid?

She still didn't feel great about being in the apartment, not by any stretch of the imagination... but last night had been an exercise of some epic fantasy that she had never dared voice out loud. Sliding her hands down into her underwear, she ran her fingers through the remnants of the night before, and licked her lip.

Was it gonna be weird when she next saw Elijah?

Oh god. Was he coming to the cafe?

_No, don't be paranoid_, she scolded herself, drying quickly. _He was sex-drunk. He didn't mean it._

She showered, dressed and had a few minutes to make some toast and coffee. She even opened the message to let Elijah know, and was confronted with their sexting.

Oh boy.

She ate her toast and got most of the way through her coffee when her phone beeped 'low battery'. She had put it on charge though! It must've come unplugged when she was taking photos. Crap. She skipped into her bedroom and collected the charger, then forgot her shoes on her way out.

The morning was pretty average fare. They had low points and highs, and Erin was away for the fourth day in a row without any one knowing about it until she didn't show, so they were understaffed for a little while.

Caroline wasn't even manning the register technically, she was organizing the stacks of to-go cookies on the side in her determined perfectionist way. So when a shadow crossed her vision she immediately turned on her cheer-leader voice and said:

"Hi! Welcome to the Coffee Bean! My name is Caroline, how can I be of service to you today?" Without looking up.

Which was her mistake.

"You know what I'm here for," Elijah said coolly.

She dropped like, six cookies. Everything slid to the floor behind the counter, including her peppy facade. She blinked at him, mouth opened, and tried to make the words thing happen.

"Caroline," said Collin, sweet Collin, her manager. He looked dazed and more than out of it. _Compelled_. "This is Mr. Mikealson. I'm gonna let you deal with your private business for as long as you need in the back room, and I will leave the keys in with you. Okay?"

"Uh-!" is what Caroline could manage to articulate.

"Walk," Elijah said gently, and she wasn't being compelled or anything, but she walked. Left all the cookies on the floor and felt her mood go from _bored at work_ to _oh boy oh boy oh boy_.

Her shoulders hiked around her ears when she stepped into the small back room, and immediately spun to keep him in her vision, backing up toward the hard wooden chairs they kept there.

He locked the door behind them, dropped the key into his pocket, and shed his coat, hanging it up neatly on the provided rack. He unbuttoned his blazer and hung that up, too, then uncuffed his sleeves and folded them in perfect rolls to the crease of his elbow.

"Safe word," he said evenly. "Pick one."

She didn't know what to say. She wasn't even sure if the _oh shit _feeling was because she was shocked he was here, because she was scared of the spanking, or if because the night before had really happened and she had been kinda pretending it hadn't.

"Traffic lights?" he suggested, and she shrugged and backed into the wall, leaning against it for support. He sniffed, fixed an already impeccable tie, and strolled over to a chair, taking a seat. He made complete eye contact when he spread his legs and indicated with a nod that she should take a seat.

"I didn't think you were serious," she blurted.

"I know." He lifted his brows when she didn't move. "Are you frightened?"

"Uhm-!" Yes? No? A little? She wet her lips. "You can't... not like you said, with the making me wait and not coming for ages. There are people here... I have work to do."

"This is only a spanking," he assured her. "No frills. And the longer you make me wait, the longer I'll deliver your punishment. Best get it over with."

"How many?" she said quickly.

"As many as I think it takes to learn what patience sounds like," he said evenly.

She hesitated. Her heart was in her throat and honestly, if someone knocked on the door and interrupted them she would actually bolt. But there was a niggling feeling in the back of her mind that it wasn't all doom and gloom... it was Elijah. He wasn't so bad. Was he? She hadn't expected him to show up at her work.

"But I can be loud," she protested meekly, twisting her fingers in front of her stomach. "I can... I don't want any one else to hear."

"You should've thought about that before you defied me," he said simply. "If you don't want to be heard, then be quiet."

It was an icy cut down, and she felt it sting. She swallowed and looked at the door like she might make a run for it, then actually stepped forward like she was going to make a run for it. He caught her hand on the way past and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, which made her look at him with a pitch in her brows.

He watched her as he pressed another kiss to her hand, then turned it over and dragged his lips over her palm. It tickled and her fingers flexed, reaching for his face. She was so unsure. Was this crossing a line? What about Klaus?

_What about Klaus? _said a nasty voice in her head. _Klaus doesn't even know where you work, let alone ever come to visit you._

_Yeah but to visit you do put you over his knee... _drawled another voice. _It isn't exactly a visit you want, is it?_

_Is it?_

She cringed.

"I'm nervous," she said.

"Tell me," he said easily, and with her hand caught in his, pulled her into the v of his wide open legs. His free hand touched her hip and she took a seat on his thigh. It felt silly and she could feel the heat creeping up in her face.

Despite having actively tried to get him riled the night before, this was different. She'd never touched him in real life the way she had talked about. There had been a veil between them, and now it was lifted. She squirmed and didn't know what to do with her hands until her took them both in his singular one, and put them over his shoulders.

"You're alright," he told her, and she for some idiotic reason, believed him. "Is it the pain that you're worried about? Or is it because it's me?"

"You," she said, strangled. "Last night - it happened so quickly..."

He studied her and she tried to take a hand to hide the blooming flush of blood creeping into her face. But he took her wrist and kissed the inside, putting it back over his shoulder with the kind of decisiveness of someone who expected that it would stay.

Being unable to hide her embarrassment meant, of course, that she was even more embarrassed. It made her squirm on his leg and she dropped her eyes to his tie just so she could catch a break from his intense gaze.

"I do miss you," he told her softly. "I miss taking care of you."

She cringed.

"I miss..." she whispered. "I miss you... taking care of me."

"Are you ashamed by that, Caroline?"

"I'm an adult," she muttered. "It's the twenty first century. I should be able to do things by myself."

"But you like when I assist?" he prompted.

"Yeah, but... I don't think I should..." She wet her lip. "You're Klaus' brother. You're my friend. I shouldn't... we shouldn't be..."

"Do you want to stop?"

Did she want to stop? No. No she didn't. Not because of anything Elijah did, only because of who he was connected to. Klaus hadn't even spoken to her for a week and there she was, worried about him. When would she learn, he didn't worry about any one but himself?

"Not really."

"If you aren't sure," he said easily. "I'll leave and you can go back to work. Or I'll stay and we can talk. I don't mind."

"I'm just-" she shrugged. "I'm nervous... There are people outside and... And you and I...?"

"Is this too strange?" he said calmly. "Is it the kinky part that's giving you the trouble?"

"I don't know, maybe," she said, and looked at him from under her lashes. "I've never... I've been spanked before but not like... Not like a role play. Not for... disobedience. This feels different."

At that moment, she felt his thumb rub consolingly over the slice of hip she was letting him hold, and it made her decide in a lightning fast moment. She took a big breath in, searching his face and finding a pillar of patience.

"I'll use the traffic lights for my safe words," she said timidly. 

He took her hand to lead her up and around his legs, holding onto her fingers.

"Do you want to start a different scene?" he murmured. "Do you want to change the tone of this one?"

She shook her head, and bent to hang determinedly over his thighs.

He plucked the ties of her apron and then guided her hands behind her back, wrapping them up firmly where he wanted them. He reached around her to lift her into a more even position, which unfortunately meant that her toes were barely on the ground.

He tucked her hair back behind her ear, and trailed that touch over her spine. Their fingers laced together and he rubbed her ass with his free hand, so close to her hip that she could feel the rise and fall of his belly.

"You know your safe words?"

"Red to stop," she muttered. "Yellow to slow down. Green to go."

"Are you comfortable?"

"I guess." Her boobs were a little squished and she shifted to try and correct it. He lifted her effortlessly and made her toes come completely off the ground, which gave her precisely no purchase. When he linked their fingers again, she squeezed his hand.

"Better?"

"Yes," she murmured.

"Are you ready?"

"No," she said grumpily.

"If you make me wait to be difficult," he informed her quietly. "I will hit you harder. Are you ready?"

"I don't know," she protested, and kicked her legs a little. "I actually don't know. Are you really going to hurt me?"

"A little," he soothed, rubbing his hand in a circle on her ass. "Just a little."

She huffed. Considering there was a big ol' thigh wedged under her, it wasn't as deep as she would like. She tested the ties around her wrists and found them pretty solid. She couldn't move to protect herself, and she felt like that might've been the point.

"Are you ready, sweetheart?" he asked again, this time more kindly.

It was her undoing. She dropped her head, her eyes shutting.

"Yes, Mr. Mikealson," she murmured, and felt the first crack land on the denim of her jeans.

She jolted away from the sting and made herself an absolute nuisance to hold, but he did it, and never once chastised her for it. After twenty smacks over the denim - she sort of lost count, but had a vague idea - he reached underneath her and tugged loose the button, yanking down the fly.

She gasped at the hot flash of stinging as he pulled down her jeans to her knees, rubbing his hand over her underwear. She was very, very pleased they were a cute cut and fairly new - these ones made her butt look good, and were a solid, flattering black.

"A few more," he decided.

"A few?" She hadn't made a single noise, but had been so grateful for the layer between her skin and his hand. "How many is a few?"

"That depends," he drawled. "When I say 'one', how many do I actually mean?"

She clenched her teeth and grunted as she dropped her head, flexing her hand around his. There was only a little mortification that her grip was sweaty. But she didn't care - his grip was strong and unflinching.

"Ah," he mused. "That's what I thought."

"Well you made me wa-!" She had to stop talking or start crying out, because the first smack on her bare skin made her choke on her own volume. She kicked both legs and squirmed up hard to one side, but that didn't stop her from catching the next slap on the same spot as the first.

She _yelped_. She couldn't help it.

"How many do I mean," he pressed, rubbing the sore skin. "When I say 'one'?"

Yeah, her little rebellious streak didn't last long.

"One."

"I beg your pardon?"

"One," she muttered. She let him steer her back flat on his lap, and braced for an impact when he took his hand off her ass. But there was no hit. She held her breath and waited, and waited, and waited, then wriggled a little.

"One, what?"

"One...sir?"

He smacked her ass again.

"That's not what you called me before," he said, mock annoyed.

"One-" she sucked in a big breath, feeling the rush of air just before it landed. "Mr. Mikealson!"

"And when I next ask you to put one finger into yourself," he enunciated carefully. "How many are you going to insert?"

She grunted in lieu of a real reply.

The smack was hard and was immediately followed by two more in the exact same spot, and she shot forward with a breathless cry, kicking her legs to try and stop him.

"Ow! Ow, ow!"

"How many?"

"_One_!" she cried out, and tried to twist, to hide her stinging ass against his stomach. But he wouldn't let her, delivering another two onto the same spot. "OW! JESUS!"

"I thought you didn't want to be heard?" he mused.

"Ow," she sulked. "Ow, that hurt."

His hand on her ass was a little more consoling. He rubbed up and down over skin that really didn't want to be touched, made her rock up and down with it too. Trying to escape that she tried to wriggle out to the side, and felt him grab a handful.

"I'm gonna be more patient," she blurted. "I won't do it again. I'll be more patient next time."

"Will you?"

"Yes, yes, I will. I'll listen. I'll be more patient," she promised him. "I'll listen, Mr. Mikealson."

She swallowed deeply. It was so uncomfortably hot and sore but... but it wasn't... Like it was bad because it was hurting, but there were things happening in her underwear and she knew he could at least smell it. She had really liked it when her jeans were on, but now was pushing it a little in terms of pain. She had thought the crop was bad, but apparently an Original hand was just as sharp.

She started to get ready to yellow card out.

He hummed, fingers ghosting in the soft, unmarked flesh between her ass. She made a strangled noise and arched her back when they traveled over the sore area, outlining the boarder of the pain.

"Caroline," he said softly.

"Hm?" she said, strained.

"You've been very good for me, sweetheart."

She shivered. Her thighs clamped, for just a little more friction. She let go a soft breath, and felt her shoulders relax from the tight hike around her neck.

"Thank you, Mr. Mikealson."

"Such a good girl deserves a little tenderness, don't you think?" he cooed, and she felt her face fill with hot blood.

"Yes?"

"Yes, what?"

"Yes, Mr. Mikealson?"

"You don't sound so sure," he said, sounding coy. He ran a hand over her ass and she groaned, tensing up once more. "You've been a good girl, sweetheart. Will you let me touch your pretty lips, and make you feel a little better?"

She wasn't sure. It kept feeling like pushing a boundary. Not one she didn't want to cross, but just... new.

"Uhm," she said, her heart flinging around her chest. "Maybe... maybe a little?"

"A little," he agreed.

He stroked his fingertips down the cleft of her ass and straight to her panties, rubbing against her lower lips with just two fingers. She felt her shaky thighs parting, her breath bursting from her mouth when he made initial contact. He circled her sensitive opening, dragging blunt nails over the cotton.

She sighed and leaned forward, lifting her ass up to him in invitation.

He tucked a finger under the elastic of the leg and pulled it agonizingly slowly over her stinging ass, forcing hurt and uncomfortable whimpers out of her throat as she struggled, putting up her feet to try and kick loose his hand. When they were finally free, sitting low on her thighs - caught by her still half worn jeans - he blew a cool stream of air onto her skin and she settled.

The anticipation of having her intimate places scrutinized so blatantly made her squirm. Now that her seal of quiet had been broken, she really struggled to rein in how noisy she was being, keening like a wounded animal, wriggling for attention.

"Do you want me to touch you, baby?"

Her whole world narrowed in on that voice, and that last word. It was like she felt an actual rush of slick begin to drip from her wanton opening. She pushed her ass up, stomach trembling to keep it there in invitation.

"Please," she said, that awful 'd' word dangerously close to tripping out of her mouth. "Please, Mr. Mikealson, please touch me."

He hissed through his teeth.

"My good girl," he said, and dipped a finger into her wetness. He swirled it around, never really breaching her. It made her hungry hole clench around the threat of his intrusion, even though he completely ignored it and stroked her hard little clit.

"Oh, fuck," she said hoarsely.

"That's enough," he murmured. It sounded awfully like he was talking to himself.

"A little more?" she squeaked.

"No," he said solemnly.

"Please?"

"Didn't we just learn about patience?" he said. He gave her ass one extra slap she hadn't been expecting, and made her jolt flat on his lap with a _shout_. "Didn't we?"

"Yes! Okay, yes, Mr. Mikealson, yes, we did, ow, no, okay," she rambled, shutting her legs against his fingers. "No more, oh, okay, that's enough, you're right, no more."

He chuckled and it made her groan in frustration. He helped her stand back up and fixed the jeans around her waist once more. The chafe of the material was nearly unbearable at first, but it went away when he pressed a kiss to the exposed strip of her belly, just above her jeans.

He worked another kiss up, under her belly button, and then looked up at her with dark eyes.

"If we were alone," he murmured. "I'd play a little longer, and you'd make all the noise you'd like."

She wet her lip, and wriggled her fingers behind her back. Her gaze traveled down his shirt, ticking off each button like she could undress him if she wanted it badly enough; she could see the photo of his naked chest in her mind's eye, and picture the way he'd look without his top on now. Beneath his belt, she could trace the thick line of him in his trouser leg, and had the desperate urge to get on her knees and see what he might do with that kind of invitation.

"My hands are still tied," she told him, flicking her attention upwards.

"I do beg your pardon. Come a little closer and I'll fix it."

He caught her belt loop with one crooked finger and dragged her closer to him, like he meant to try and intimidate her by breathing hotly against her stomach. That wouldn't do. She lifted her leg and stepped over one of his thighs, then repeated the action on the other side, sinking down to sit on his lap.

"Untie me," she demanded quietly.

He wrapped his arms around her, sliding one to her ass, which made her suck in a harsh breath and wince a little at the sting. He hauled her closer, hushing her as noises spilled out of her throat to come into contact with him so intimately. She put her head against his shoulder, unable to look into his eyes for much longer, and tightened up every muscle in her body when his lips suckled on her throat. He adjusted his hand to support under her thigh and with one knowing hand unbuttoned her first three, peeling her shirt to one side, fingers tracing the cup of her modest pink bra.

"Don't stop," she whispered, rocking up. Goosebumps burst on her skin and she shut her eyes, chewing her lip when he trailed his attention down to the swollen nipple beneath the fabric. "God, please, touch me."

"This was supposed to be a punishment," he murmured, and applied his gentle mouth to the flat plane of her chest, the barest hint of teeth as he moved toward her breast. He supported it in his hand, lifting it to his mouth, sucking on the swell of it. "For you. How you've managed to turn the tables..."

She made a noise like '_guh_!', still trying to keep her reactions as quiet as she could.

The hand on her leg went up to squeeze her ass and the sting made her surge upward; he clamped his arms around her waist and sucked a little harder on her tit. His hand groped downward to smack the seat of her pants and this elicited a high pitched yelp, her thighs closing around his waist to try and pry herself free.

He tugged the cup of her bra out of his way and got his mouth on her nipple, which made her rock against him with more intent. She felt her head go slack on her neck, and eyes fall shut, as she dragged out her hard nipple, teasing it with flat teeth.

"Elijah," she said breathily.

His nipped her skin hard enough that she screwed her eyes shut, throwing back her head.

"_Mr. Mikealson!_"

"Mm?" His mouth, otherwise occupied, was too dedicated to unlatch and speak to her. His hands took both her ass cheeks in claws and she jolted, trying to squirm away, essentially fucking herself forward against the tense lines of his belly.

"Hands," she blurted. "Untie my hands. I want to touch."

He undid one with a too-easy pull of a single string, and she wasted no time in grabbing the back of his head, anchoring his face to her breast. She reached back and knocked his hand away from her ass only for him to slap it down again. She dug her nails into his shirt and made the cry quiet by sealing her mouth against the noise, bending her head to his shoulder again.

"That's enough..." he said, letting her nipple go for a moment. He looked half-drunk at the taste of her, of having her rolling her body against his lap.

When she quickly unearthed her other breast and took a handful of his hair to steer him to it, he didn't struggle, just stopped shy of actually touching her.

"Please," she said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Suck," she whispered. "Please. Please, Mr. Mikealson, please suck on my tits."

"As you wish."

The idea that he was trying so hard to regain his composure, and was so easily letting it slide, made her fill with hot blood. It was a different kind of power than the clear physical one he had over her. Something about him wanting to be with her that badly gave her goosebumps.

She got loose his tie, whipping it off over her shoulder, and undid the buttons of his shirt to his waist, shoving the collar open to admire the hard line of his pronounced collarbone. He was bigger in comparison to Klaus, but this detail of him was so striking. Her nails dragged through the thatch of hair on his chest and she bent her head to press a timid kiss to his shoulder, feeling him release her breast from his mouth.

He leaned back in the chair, hands bracing her hips more kindly. He took her curiously petting fingers, bringing them to his lips to kiss, each individual fingertip being paid a small attention.

"Is it okay if I... kiss you?" she asked softly.

"Of course," he murmured, reaching up to touch her face. "Of course, sweetheart. I'd love for you to kiss me. Take what you will."

She was shy under the soft tone, and ducked her head to press her lips again to his shoulder, moving over his collarbone. She took her time in the deep indent of it, trailing tongue and nose against the small impression just below his throat, and ran her hand over the meaty part of his chest. Her nail caught his nipple and she felt his thighs flex beneath her.

"Can you untie my other hand?" she said against his skin. "Please?"

"I'm not certain I'd know what to do, if you had two hands and your tricky mouth," he said, amused.

"My mouth's not tricky," she protested, and sat back on his lap, the seat of her sore ass mostly free between his open thighs. "It's the tongue you have to worry about."

He cupped her face, sliding his thumb along her lower lip. She opened up and took it in, looking at him from behind her lashes as she did so, making sure to create a solid cup to slide his digit along.

His jaw went rigid and he seemed to be weighing his words before he trailed that wet thumb over her lip and down to rub against her exposed nipple.

"How do you feel?" he muttered.

She felt her brows pull together.

"Huh?"

"How do you feel?" he repeated. "About what we're doing?"

"Uhm..." She tipped her head to the side. "Way to kill the mood."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"Yeah, that was intentional," she said sharply, and snatched her hand away to fix her bra, hide her sensitive peaks from his hand. She only had the one hand, but she crossed it over her belly in the mockery of an angry expression, trying to scoot back gracefully.

It didn't work.

He put his hand under her arm and helped her to stand, and she muttered a grudging: "thank-you," but didn't look at him when she turned her back to him, eyes on the floor, hand pulling shut her shirt.

"Can you untie me, please?"

A single tug had her apron falling to the ground and her arm let free. She kept her back turned to him while she hastened to do the buttons, and then swooped down (her ass sung with burned nerves, and she winced but still didn't make a sound) to collect her apron and tied it around her waist with shaky fingers.

"Caroline," he said smoothly. "It's a fair question."

"It's fine," she said quickly. "I'm fine."

"I need to make sure you're alright before I send you off to go about your day," he informed her.

"Yup. I'm good." She didn't look at him. She couldn't make herself do it. She just tugged the tail ends of her shirt out from being bunched weirdly under the apron strings a little harder than strictly necessary, reaching up to try and comb her flyaways into her hair. "Nothing to see here. It's just your average, every-day Original spanking at work."

"Do you regret it?"

"Nope," she said, mock brightly, and tried to stride to the door with her ponytail swinging behind her, but he was already at the door, leaning against it completely dressed, barring her exit. She accidentally made eye contact with him and kept it just to challenge him. "Oh, _what_?"

He lifted both eyebrows at her.

"You expect me to believe that you're alright with what just happened?" he said evenly. "With this shift in behavior?"

"Yes," she said flippantly. "I'm entitled to a mood swing, _dad_. You literally just had me over your knee and my butt hurts."

"You didn't start _this_-" he motioned up and down at her. "Until I asked if you were alright. Don't make this about the pain when it isn't."

She looked away from him to the little kitchenette, where the sink had a few dirty cups waiting for someone to put them in the dishwasher. She itched to do it, her anxious cleaning habit nearly getting the best of her.

"It's fine," she said tightly. "I'm fine. Can you please get out of the way so I can go back to work?"

"You're feeling badly," he said lowly. "What part of this is upsetting you?"

"I'm not upset. My butt hurts."

"It'll hurt a lot more when I get it out of you the hard way," he threatened. The timbre of his voice sent shivers down her spine, mostly of the _oh boy_ variety. "Tell me what's wrong."

"Nothing is wrong."

"If you think I won't put you back over my knee to get it out of you," he promised her. "I can assure you, I will."

"You can hit me all you want," she said flatly. "I'm not upset."

She actually stumbled back several quick steps at his mere change in stance - she held the handle of the cupboard next to her hip and watched him pinch the bridge of his nose, breathing in deeply.

"Caroline," he said, the patience in his voice very, very thinly spread. He put his hand in his pocket and looked at her, his mouth in a small frown. "I'm too old to let that fool me, and I am not my brother."

At the mention of Klaus, she flinched. She felt it happening without her permission, and she knew he noticed. She watched him piece together what was going on in her mind, watched him understand her internal conflict.

"Ah," he said softly. "My brother. You're guilty over Klaus."

She wanted to deny it, but what came out instead was:

"I need to go back to work, Elijah. Can you please move?"

He did not blink for a startlingly long time as he took her measure. Finally he moved out of the doorway and indicated that she should leave through it.

Without hesitation she did, her stride shortened by the flare of heat in the back of her jeans. She unsnapped the lock and yanked open the door, halfway to freedom when he caught her hand.

He stood in the doorway with her, cupping her skull in tender, gentle hands.

"It's alright," he promised her, and angled her head down to let him kiss her brow.

"It's not," she mumbled, her eyes shut. She let the door out of her hands and dug her fingers against the planes of his impeccable shirt, finding the rise of his collarbone. "It's not alright."

"I would never lead you astray," he said solemnly. He pressed a soft kiss to the corner of her eye and she melted, feeling him wrap an arm around her waist, bring her in to his body. He was still half hard and pressed against her thigh. She wanted to reach between them and feel for herself what her mind had imagined.

"I-...Klaus..." she said, and made herself unlatch from him. "I - have to go back to work. I can't do this now."

"We'll talk later," he told her gently, and managed one soft kiss against her cheek.

Impulse overriding her basic common sense - already so guilty over feeling the things she felt for her (NOT BOYFRIEND!)'s brother, she held his face in her own hands and stole a kiss from his mouth.

She breathed him in, just a mash of lips, before he tucked himself around her more warmly and kissed her back. He alternated pressing those delicious little touches to upper and lower lip in turn, swiping his tongue enough to tease the edge of her mouth. She sighed and bent her whole body until she was pressed against him from breast to crotch, sliding her fingers up into his hair to scratch mindlessly against his scalp. At the sound of his delighted purring, she opened her thigh and caught the hard length of him in the hot space between her legs, rocking against it with intent.

The appearance of teeth in her lip made her groan into the kiss, and he clutched her waist in one hand, the back of her head in the other.

"Naughty," he muttered against her lip, and pressed a final kiss there.

"If this all goes to hell," she whispered, kissing his cheek like she was stealing something. "I'll at least be glad to have that."

"It won't," he promised. His eyes were half lidded and very soft, and he stroked her cheek with his thumb. "I want only to look after you, sweetheart. I wouldn't do any of this if I thought you'd be hurt for it. I give you my word."

He might've gone on to say something else, but something caught his attention, and he glanced to his left - out into the cafe, which was in plain view from where they were standing.

Caroline followed his gaze and shoved herself off his chest to land with a dull thud on the opposite side of the doorway, a hand flying to her swollen mouth.

"_Elena_! Hi! What are you doing here!?"

"Oh, uhm-!" She looked between them both, eyes wide. "Your neighbor Joyce-!"

"Joyce!" Caroline said, hands twisting in front of her apron. "Right! _Right_! Joyce knows where I work!"

"Yeah!" Elena was nodding. Too much nodding. "Yeah, she said if I was bored at your place I should just come - I tried to text you!"

"Oh, uh-!" she jerked her thumb at the room behind her. "My phone is in there!"

"Right!" Still nodding, Elena glanced at Elijah, then down at his hard-on, and then up to the roof. "Hi, Elijah!"

"Hello, Elena," he said, ever smoothly. "Caroline didn't mention you were coming to stay."

"Just for a few days," she said, her voice weirdly pitchy. She was determinedly not looking at him in any capacity. She rubbed her forehead and puffed a breath out to dispel a long strand of hair that had fallen into her face.

"It would be remiss of me to know you were here and not offer to at least take you out for dinner," he said casually. "Old times' sake, and all that. Would you be interested?"

"I'll think about it," Elena told the wall.

There was a pause. No one was quite looking at each other, except for Elijah, who cast his gaze between the two young women with a steadily growing smile.

"I think that's rather my que to leave. Always good to see you, Elena. I'll call you later, Caroline."

"Bye," she said, and then just before he started to walk - possibly because he was still rocking the hell out of a semi in his trousers, and her ass hurt and her lips were tingling - she reached out and grabbed his hand to pull him back, rolling up onto her tip-toes to catch his lips in a quick kiss.

"Bye," he echoed, and kissed her back, holding the side of her neck for a second before kissing her cheek and nothing short of sauntering away.

Caroline let his fingers slip out of hers and watched him the entire way out, the slight pinking in the high points of his cheeks as he strolled past the cafe window. He didn't look back, which was great, because not only were Caroline and Elena just like, staring; Royce, Lena and Margret were, too, all stacked behind the counter pretending to be busy.

"Oh, your business got all sorted?" Collin said, coming from the store room with two boxes of biscuits in his arms.

"Yup!" she said shrilly.

"Excellent. Seemed important," he said casually, and bumped them up an inch. "Can you get the orange juices restocked out front, please? And I think we need to check the supply for when the next delivery is coming in."

"Got it!" She said, and gave him a cheerful thumbs up. "All good! Leave it with me!"

Collin gave her a tired, friendly smile and thanks, and went to put the biscuits out the front.

Elena was staring at her with eyebrows up.

"Don't even," Caroline said quickly. "After I hung up from you, everything changed. It's a story. We don't have the time right now."

"We do after you knock off," Elena pointed out. "So good luck distracting me after that."

Caroline cringed, and hustled to go get the orange juice all sorted out. Everything hurt her poor raw ass, but none of it was necessarily bad.

Just. You know.

Distracting.


	5. Oh Enzo

"So you're both caught between two brothers?" Bonnie's voice said from the iPhone set up on the dock. Her voice was amplified by the speakers, making it sound like she was in the room with them.

They were sitting at Caroline's kitchen bench, both nervously swinging on her twisty bar stools. Elena had a cup of unsipped coffee between her hands, and Caroline had water with a curly straw.

"I'm not really caught between two..." Caroline said sheepishly.

"If you're thinking about him when his brother has you ass up over his knee, you're stuck on him," Bonnie said mildly. "Not to mention you nearly dropped the daddy bomb on him. That's never happened before."

Caroline hid her eyes and tried to massage away the headache that had built up in her temples, then took a sip of her cooling drink.

"It just kind of..." she swallowed. "Bubbled up..."

"Are you sure there isn't a spell?" Elena said. "That could... momentarily make someone lower their inhibitions? I mean, Caroline and Elijah? Me and Damon? We're both - not like this, normally... Maybe there's like, a moon thing?"

"Yeah, but it doesn't apply to sex," Bonnie insisted. "The ancestors draw a line with that."

"But you can compel someone to have sex," Caroline said, unearthing from her hand. "Or to like, not move, or take off their clothes, or something."

"Yeah, because that's not magic," Bonnie agreed. "That's vampire stuff. And Elena was wearing her necklace, and you've been eating vervain. Right?"

"Right," Elena agreed dully. She stared into her coffee. "I don't know what came over me. He was just being so nice..."

"Nice is the worst," Caroline agreed in a grumpy mumble. "I miss Klaus. Straight to the point. No sexy little games or sweet nicknames or kisses."

"Doesn't he nearly exclusively call you love?" Elena muttered.

"And I'm pretty sure he kisses you plenty," Bonnie pointed out.

"Yeah, but he does it - you know. Rough. Elijah is..." she searched for a word. Found only one. "Nice."

"Nice," Elena repeated, as if it were a dark curse word. "Dangerous."

Bonnie looked between them on the screen.

"So you're both, what? Hibernating?" she said flatly. "No one's going to solve their sexy vampire problems?"

"I would, but I don't know what to do," Elena protested.

"How did Stefan take it?" Bonnie prompted. "You told him what happened? Did you tell him in detail?"

"Yeah."

"You told him the exact way you told me?" Bonnie pressed. "And Caroline? About the massaging and then the moving up the leg and then the sitting on his lap and everything?"

Elena nodded, her eyes cast down.

"He was so quiet," she murmured, her voice husky. She reached up and fiddled with the pendant around her neck, dragging it up and down the chain. "Really quiet. I told him I would leave him alone for a few days for him to process it. He just sat there, and said 'yeah, I think that's a good idea'. So... I left."

"He might kill Damon," Bonnie said mildly.

"No he won't," Caroline amended quickly.

"What's the end goal, Elena?" Bonnie said. "What would be your ideal end to this?"

Elena shrugged one shoulder, still staring into her mug.

"Threesome?" Bonnie guessed.

Elena nodded once.

"A whole relationship, or just the sex stuff?"

"The whole thing," she murmured. She tucked her hair behind her ears and looked up at the phone. "I don't know how it would work, but... it feels like both or neither."

"Huh," Bonnie said thoughtfully. She turned her attention to Caroline. "What about you?"

"What about me?" she said quickly. "I don't know what happened. This thing with Elijah is like, not even twenty four hours old."

"And yet he's stirred up the daddy kink you pretend you don't have and actively spanked you," Bonnie pointed out. "You couldn't do that with anyone last time we talked."

"No, remember there was that guy? Brandon? He spanked me. And used a crop." Caroline was a little alarmed to sound so defensive about it. Bonnie was waiting with her eyebrows up. "I've been spanked before!"

"One guy. No daddy stuff."

"Would you stop saying that word?" Caroline hissed.

Bonnie didn't even bat an eye.

"Did you even talk to Klaus about your kink?"

"Klaus..." she said uneasily. "Klaus and I... he was already... you know. Dominant. But he's not... he doesn't fit that role... Elijah is different."

"Okay," Bonnie said slowly. Caroline doubted it made sense to her, but she dismissed the thought. "Ideally, how does this end?"

"I haven't thought that far ahead," Caroline admitted.

"Do you want to be with Klaus?"

"I think about him all the time," she said slowly. "I miss him every day. When I'm not busy I think about what he's doing. He makes me feel like I have power, but so does Elijah..."

"So would you rather be with him?"

"I don't know," was her honest reply.

They sat in thought for a while, all three of them just churning through their own thinking. Caroline wasn't sure what she wanted between the Original brothers, but the idea of being in Elena's position - of having to choose both or neither? That made her heart want to skip a beat.

"How's Europe?" Elena tried.

"Amazing. I keep finding traces of my ancestors in the earth. Enzo knows someone every where we go, and I can practice some of my readings on people for spare change," she seemed at ease. "It's all so beautiful. I love being on the road."

"And _he_ certainly doesn't make it hard," Caroline teased. "I saw him in your last Insta at those hot springs."

"Meow," Elena said with a chuckle. "We love Enzo St. Speedo."

"The cutie with a booty!" Caroline giggled.

"Thanks, gorgeous," came hollering through the background.

Bonnie shut her eyes tight, pressing both lips together.

Elena leaned forward on her elbows and Caroline slapped a hand over her mouth.

"Is he-?" Elena said slowly.

"_Listening_?" Caroline spat.

"He's old, he doesn't care about kinks and threesomes!" was Bonnie's quick defense.

"Bonnie Bennett," said a crisp British voice. A half circle of someone's head marred their collective view of the embarrassed witch as he bent over the top of the camera. "I'll have you two know I find threesomes and kinks very interesting, indeed. Especially concerning your selection."

"Why are they always British?" Caroline mumbled to herself.

"Accent," he quipped. "Listen, ladies, far be it from me to assume I know the ins and outs of your internal dilemmas, here, but let it come from a man who's seen a bit of the world. You two are over thinking."

Bonnie shoved him out of the way, the camera struggling to readjust to the different lighting. She pulled her laptop closer to herself and then there was movement as Enzo jumped on the bed beside her, laying his head on her shoulder to be in frame.

She pretended to be put out. No one was fooled.

"How?" Caroline demanded. "How is any of this being over thought?"

"Let's start with the easy fix," he said. "Your gentlemen are a thousand years old, love, and from what I've heard of rumor - as well as applying a bit of my own schema, here - I can bet they have seen and done everything. To think they'd shy away from daddy play is a joke. I'd bet good money they have little nuances you can't even fathom, and have likely gone out of vogue."

"My kink isn't vogue," she tried to protest in a small voice.

Elena patted her shoulder in sympathy.

"Sure it is," he said brightly. "Not to mention more taboo things I think it's best you broach with them. You think it'd be difficult to hop between them? What about you had them both at the same time?"

"Don't be gross!" Bonnie warned with a hit on his arm.

"Don't knock it 'til you try, is all I'm suggesting. The old ones aren't shy, and they're the oldest. Now, Elena, love, you listen to me-" He turned his cavalier attention to Elena, who physically tensed in her chair. "I know Damon much differently to you, that you well know. But if he's done half the things you say he's done, that love in him is true for you. Suggesting he share you will always win over having none of you. It's just the devil in the details of figuring out how it's best done, but you can't rule out that they won't co-exist."

"They can't even share a house," Caroline said flatly. "Sorry, Elena, I know you're not a house, but you know they can't."

"They can't," Elena agreed mildly.

"Why would they be okay with sharing..." Caroline motioned to her friend. "Her?"

"Because she'll refute them both if they won't play nicely," he said with a shrug. "Ladies, you have no idea the power you hold in your precious little hands. You have these men by the short and curlies, do you understand me?"

"Unfortunately," Elena said, finally sipping her coffee.

"Infatuation when you're a vampire is like a drug," he went on smoothly. "You are their fix. They likely already want you in all manner of depraved ways. Why not open the door to choosing how depraved you go? Lay down the ground work. Make the rules."

"Keep safe," Bonnie added. Her fingers were carding through the back of his hair, and she was watching him spend his time advising her friends' relationship dramas. There was a fondness in her gaze that didn't go unnoticed by either of the girls in Caroline's kitchen. She cleared her throat and looked at the screen. "I'll send you over some charms and wards if you'd like. It would make me feel better."

"It sounds good," Caroline agreed.

"Yeah, Bon," Elena said softly. "Thanks."

"Despite how easily Mr. St. John has decided it is," she went on, arching a brow at him lolling like a lapdog to let her pet his hair. "I know you two better than he does. Caroline, if you want my advice; when Elijah calls tonight, talk to him. Tell him what you want."

"I don't know what I want," she said quickly.

"You know what you _don't_ want," Bonnie insisted.

"Yeah..." Caroline agreed.

"And Elena," she said, gentling her tone. "Stefan is a good man. Damon... Damon's good runs much, much deeper. If you're gonna go there, make sure you think about what happens if it ends badly."

Elena chewed her lip, nodding solemnly.

"Love you, Bon," Caroline said.

"Love you too." She kissed her fingers and blew it to the camera.

Enzo waved a sleepy hand at them both.

"Lovely to talk, ladies," he purred. "Look forward to the conclusion."

"Yeah," Elena said quietly. "Me too."

She reached out and pressed the red button to hang up before Bonnie could get another word in.

The both of them sat there in quiet for a little while. When Caroline reached out and pulled Elena into a hug, she went with a sniffle and a few spilled tears. They clutched each other for a moment, then released, laughing wetly.

"Our lives are so weird," Elena said first.

"So weird," Caroline agreed, and dabbed her face on her shirt.


	6. Oh Brother

Elena went to sleep on the pull out couch relatively early, which was just as well, because Caroline got impatient for Elijah's call.

_You left a mark,_ she sent him.

_Where? _was his immediate reply.

_Guess_, she said simply.

_Are you alright?_ he sent, follow by: _I'm sorry, sweetheart._

_Why? _she typed and sent. _I'm not._

She laid out on her bed in a pair of pretty lace panties and her fanciest bra, fingers already grazing her stiffening nipples through the sheer material of her cups. It was a mostly unused one - too unsupportive for day-to-day, and the lace always peeked out in weird places on cotton shirts - but it sure did the trick to make her feel sexy.

She had taken an artful selfie in the bathroom just before she'd crawled onto her bed. The lighting was good, and her hair was sitting right. The cut of the black lace on her soft white hips begged to be snapped against her waist. The way her boobs fit in this bra made them look big and high.

The sheer material of the cup framed a dark suck mark on her breast, surrounded by several others, and the imprint of teeth. In the photo, because her panties were so see-through, she'd cupped herself to protect her modesty.

The way she cupped herself now was with a little more intent.

His name lit up her screen as he called her. She broke into a smile and slid her fingers under the lace, circling her hole, feeling it already damp as she swiped to answer, leaning back in the pillows to let his voice flow through her headphones.

"_You didn't learn a single thing about patience today_," he accused throatily.

"I'm already wet," she murmured.

_"Caroline_." He sighed hard. "_We're supposed to be talking_."

"Talk," she urged. "Tell me what to do."

There was a pause before a string of vicious swearing in a foreign tongue.

"You're not in bed?" she said softly. "Are you out?"

"_I'm at home,_" he confirmed. There was the sound of glass on glass, and a gurgle of liquid from a bottle neck. She heard a deep inhale and a gulp of what she imagined was expensive booze. "_I'm in the office_."

"Is Klaus there?" she worried.

He seemed to be swallowing his drink too much to answer in that moment. She sat up a little, which made her rub her tender skin on the sheets and utter a small: "Ow."

"_Are you sore?_" he murmured.

"Yes," she replied, and continued rolling her fingers around in a circle, dipping one just past her entrance.

"_Poor thing_," he consoled. "_I should've kissed you better_."

"If you had've put your mouth anywhere near me down there," she pointed out. "I would've one hundred per cent had your tongue in me."

"_Is that so?_"

"Yes," she said boldly. "Your fingers... god, Elijah, your fingers... when you touched me... If you had've just - pulled aside my underwear and slid just one in? I would've come for you."

"_You weren't that wet_," he informed her.

"I was turned on," she protested. "I was _so turned on._ You tied me up. You had me at your mercy. You don't know what that does to me."

"_I'm fairly sure I do_," he said easily. "_I wanted to play, sweetheart, and make you feel better. But you were too embarrassed by the thought of anyone overhearing for me to play you the way I wanted to. And you and I, Caroline... we should talk._"

"I don't want to talk," she murmured into the mic. "I want to play, Mr. Mikealson."

"_This can't go on without rules_," he said firmly. "_We need boundaries. What we started last night and what continued today - it's weighing on you. I know it is_."

"I don't want to talk right now," she insisted. "I have two fingers in me, and my ass hurts, and I'm waiting for you to tell me what to do."

He sighed.

"_Caroline..."_

"Please?" she said. When he didn't answer right away, she tried out a little something that made her very soul tremble to express, but she suspected would drag him into the game with her. All day, she'd been thinking about it. All day, she'd had that word in her head. She took in a breath, and whispered: "Won't you play with me, daddy?"

There was a noise in the background on his end that sounded suspiciously like an uttered: '_fuck_'. Maybe he pulled the receiver away so she didn't have to hear it.

She heard him take a seat in the creaky leather arm chair and the unmistakable sound of a fly being zipped down. The belt buckle and the whisper of a silken tie being tugged from his throat. He muttered a string of words in a language that sounded dead to the rest of the world, and grunted into the receiver.

"_What are you doing right now?" _he asked slowly.

"I have one hand on the tit that you had in your mouth," she said, her voice pitched weirdly. "I'm playing with my nipples over the fabric. If I pull, I can nearly feel your mouth on me..."

"_And the other hand_?"

"In my panties." She realized belatedly her voice was mimicking a little girl's. At first it made her cringe, but when she spoke next, the voice was still the same. "I've got two fingers in."

"_In and out_," he instructed quietly. "_Slow. Where's Elena?_"

"Asleep in the lounge room," she whispered, like that would make a difference.

"_Good_," he muttered.

"Did you think I'd have her next to me?" she teased. Her fingers were wet and she scissored them a little, eyes fluttering closed as she went. "Did you want her to help me?"

"_It crossed my mind,_" he said coolly. "_To get you on your knees, and have her spank you for being so naughty._"

"It would hurt," she realized. "After you."

"_Yes, it certainly would_." There was a pause. "_Did you get a photo?_"

"It's not red anymore," she breathed. "Just a little pink."

"_Can you get a photo now?_" he muttered.

She swallowed.

"I can if you promise you're not gonna hang up on me tonight," she bartered.

He exhaled a laugh.

"_Did you come watching that video?_" he asked her fairly. "_Last night? The one you sent me the link to?_"

"Yeah," she said breathily.

"_When?_" he said, almost polite.

"Uh- About - two minutes?" she said. She pushed her fingers into herself deeper, pressing up with her hips to aid the effort of feeling fuller.

"_What part?_" he said evenly.

Her brain whirred. It was a video she'd seen like, fifteen times before.

Schoolgirl comes home early in her obscenely tiny uniform, and she bends over to take off her shoes right as her dad walks in to see her naked ass poking out from under the hem. It cuts to him spanking her over the edge of the couch, and 'accidentally' falling on top of her to nurse his hard cock between her legs. She threatens if he doesn't go down on her she'll tell her mother. So he does.

But Caroline didn't get that far, not last night. She didn't even get half way through the video. She got as far as him forcing her to bend over the couch and then it was all over; fireworks. She'd even made noise, groaning and thrashing around, coming so hard around the cock she forgot how to fuck it into her for a while.

"When he pushed her down," she said timidly.

"_He was very rough with her when he did that_," he noted. "_I watched that whole video, you know. Would you like me to tell you what made me come?_"

"Yes."

_"Yes, what?_" He tutted.

"Yes, please," she corrected.

"_Yes, please, what?_" he encouraged. "_Try again_."

She licked her lips, shut her eyes, rocked her hips and pressed inside herself.

"Yes, please, daddy," she whimpered. "Please tell me what made you come."

_"Well when you ask like that_," he murmured. "_How can I possibly tell you no?_"

She pulled fingers out of herself to stroke her hard little clit. It made her breath hitch and she curled her toes down into the bed, pulling her lip into her mouth to chew on it and keep her moaning quiet. Talking volume was okay; the sex noise would probably wake up her guest.

"_I came when he started to fuck her with his fingers_," he told her softly down the line. "_When she began to draw close to the edge of her orgasm and she started to beg him. I liked the pretty way she said his name, Caroline, begging her daddy to make her come. I liked the way he did not stop, when she was so sensitive and trying to squirm off of his hand. I liked that he pinned her down and stole another orgasm out of her spasming cunt._"

"Holy shit," she whispered.

"_I thought about doing that to you, today_," he confessed. "_I thought about fucking you with my fingers, having you call out my name. You nearly said it today, didn't you? Didn't you nearly call me daddy?"_

"I've never done it out loud before," she agreed in a stressed whisper.

"_But you're doing it tonight?_" She heard him swallow. "_Are you... do you feel comfortable, with this?"_

"Yes," she breathed. "Yes please, daddy."

"_Good_," he said, and she heard his hand moving over his dick, wet and insistent. "_I- Thank you."_

She shuddered and dipped her fingers down into her hungry hole, pumping them in and out.

"You can't tell anyone," she muttered. Her voice was lower than that childish one she had been talking in. She breathed hard. "Please don't tell anyone."

By '_anyone_', she meant '_Klaus_'.

"_Are you embarrassed?_"

"Yes," she said. "I hate it."

_"Why?_"

She didn't want to talk about that, either. She turned her face toward the blue dildo and thought about shoving it inside herself, seeing what he would do in recompense. Swallowing, she picked it up in her dry hand, bringing it over to her lips. She audibly kissed the tip of it, then laid it in the valley of her breasts.

"_Caroline?_" he said into the phone.

"I need to take a photo," she said quietly. "Can I call you back?"

_"Yes,_" he said. "_Yes, you can call me back._"

"Send me one," she said cheekily, and hung up before he could confirm or deny.

She rolled up off the bed and deposited the headphones on her pillow, taking the phone and the dildo and going to her full length mirror. She turned on the lights and organised the phone on a ten second timer, arranging herself as she wanted to be seen.

The first photo was not attractive. She also got the bright idea to turn on the Live option, so that he would see what she was doing for a snippet in time.

She set up the phone again, assumed the position, and pumped the toy in and out of her pussy with a small groan. The flash went off and she continued to fuck herself for a second, just in case he would watch it all the way through.

When she picked up the phone, her heart skipped a beat.

She looked like a grade-A pornstar, honestly.

On her knees and bent ass first toward the camera, her pretty black thong pulled to the side, one hand plunging the toy in and out with an obscene wet slurping. Her other arm was trembling faintly to support her, and she could see the pink marks left on the high points of her ass, illuminated by the flash.

The groan was... hot. Even hearing it through her re-plugged in headphones, she felt her core tighten on the toy that was moving in and out to hear it. She was faceless, with only long blonde hair spilling over her shoulder, red painted toes curled in extract.

She sent it and called him back, barely through the first ring before he answered.

"Wait until you see," she whispered. "You should watch it all the way through."

"_Watch it?_" he repeated. There was a ding in her ear from his end of the line - the photo. Her stomach churned in nerves when she heard the tinny groaning as he viewed the whole thing through. She thought maybe she heard him lick his lips, and then a deep inhale through his nose. "_If I were there right now, Caroline_..."

"Would you fuck me hard?"

"_No,_" he lowered his volume. "_You need to do me a favor, and lick off all the slick off your toy. I want to hear you."_

"Do you want me to facetime it?" she said.

_"No. Focus on sucking,"_ was his clear order.

She mewled to lose the toy, but pulled it out of her underwear and put it up to lick up the side.

"You didn't send me a photo," she muttered.

"_I didn't_," he said evenly. "_Put the toy in your mouth. Clean it. I want you to think it's my cock between your lips, covered in the taste of you. I want you to imagine I've been filling you up so slowly, and then pulling all the way out._"

"Mean," she muttered, and sucked on the head of the toy.

"_What's mean is that I've somehow been suckered into this little game between us,_" he said mildly. "_I had you over my knee today and you weren't half as bold. We should've been talking now. You won't tell me what our boundaries are_."

She pulled the dildo out of her mouth with an actual pop to start to protest but he was already cutting her off.

"_Put that cock back in your mouth,_" he said sharply, and she obeyed, sucking loudly to make sure he knew. "_You said you would listen to me, Caroline. So you will listen. You suck that toy clean and you keep sucking it until I say so. Do you understand me?"_

"Mmhm," she said, mouthful.

"_I beg your pardon?_" he said politely.

"I understand," she said around the toy.

"_I understand...?_" he prompted.

"Daddy," she said, and felt a frisson of heat explode in her groin. It came out noisily and almost indistinguishable, but he seemed to get the gist. "Yes, daddy, I understand."

"_That's my good girl_," he said, and she reached southward with her free hand to clamp down on her throbbing clit, praying he wouldn't hear.

And she knew it was twisty, this kink of hers, particularly since she was a strong woman who had strong female role models and was always in charge of her own shit. But the daddy thing... that was a weakness of hers. And no one had ever fit her, the way she'd needed them to fit her. It wasn't like it was entirely about the domination part of things, or the taboo. She needed the part that made it feel... a little familial. Like... he might actually give a shit about her grades, or things like having a good breakfast.

Which he did, so.

"_I'm going to fuck your mouth nice and slow,_" he told her softly. "_I'm going to take your head in my hands and hold you still for me to do it in my own time. Never deep enough to choke you, do you understand?"_

"Mmhm."

"_What was that?_"

"Yes, daddy." She swallowed around the toy and shut her eyes.

"_You're being so good for me_," he said.

"Mm-mm," she agreed, pleased.

"_That's because you're my good girl_," he approved. "_But now I want to play with you. So, you have a choice. I can either lean back and rub your clit while you suck, or I can ask Klaus in to play for me. What would you prefer?"_

She nearly choked on the actual cock in her mouth. The image in her head completely twisted from this dominant submissive bullshit, and made her insides go _squick_. She took the dick out of her mouth, breathing hard.

"Klaus would never," she said roughly.

"_Yes he would,_" he assured her. "_He wants to be with you_."

"He wouldn't share," she stressed.

"_He would, and has_." There was a small pause. "_We've shared in the past._"

"Have you?" her breath hitched.

"_Yes_," he softened his tone. "_Would you like for me to ask Klaus to touch your dripping core, Caroline? Or would you like me to do it?_"

She swallowed. This was... this was a lot. But he suggested it, so... So maybe it wasn't too much. If she could just play along. What was the harm in that? It... it was really... not a bad image to get off to - Elijah straddling her face, and Klaus between her legs. Yeah. Not bad at all.

"Klaus."

"_Good girl. Now, take the fingers on your breast_," Elijah instructed gently. "_And put them on your clit, and begin to touch yourself softly. You know how he moves. It's his tongue on you. He's sitting between your thighs, and he's being gentle."_

"Gentle," she repeated, dumbfounded. She did as he asked and wasn't sure why she gasped when she made contact, but she did, thinking about Elijah's weight on her chest and Klaus' clever tongue between her folds. Holy shit. Holy _shit_. "Okay. Yes."

"_Cock in your mouth_," he reminded her, and she did so with a quick apology, pulling it in and out, slurping the spittle that gathered under the head. She pumped it in and out of her mouth and accidentally tripped her own gag reflex, causing her to choke. "_Easy, sweetheart. I'm not that rough."_

She tried to say _I like it rough_ around the dick, but he either didn't hear her or was ignoring her.

"_The point of the gag is to keep you quiet_," he said patiently. "_Can you do that, for me, please?_"

She agreed in a pleased hum, eyes rolling shut. She knew what Klaus' tongue was like, and she knew that he flicked it on her clit. Doing the same to herself made her breathing go all weird, and she grunted around the dildo, sucking loudly.

"_Good,_" he breathed. "_Good girl. You're doing so well. Much better now that you know the consequences of bad __behavior_."

The image of him spanking her filled her mind's eye. Still not the worst thing to happen, but awfully confronting. Thinking about him maybe spanking her tomorrow made her clamp her legs around her hand, force the cock into her mouth and gag on it again.

"_Gentle_," he reminded her. "_I only want to keep you quiet. I don't want to choke you_."

She softened her straining neck, the way she was trying to lift her head and suck a dick she could just as easily bring to her mouth, not the other way around. She popped it out of her mouth to catch her breath, licking loudly, slurping the gathered spit on the head.

"Dripping," she explained, and sucked the cock back into her mouth.

There was a pause.

"_I'm leaking for you_," he agreed mildly. "_I'm covered in the beginning of my own release. Thinking about you being so good for me, Caroline... it's making me desperate to have you in my arms, sitting full of my cock. I wanted you earlier. Now I feel like I need you._"

She groaned around the dildo. Not much she could say to that. She wanted him to fuck her pretty bad, too.

"_Klaus is beginning to lose his own patience,_" he told her. "_He's getting his fingers into you. How many do you take?"_

"Two, please," she said around the dick. Two was about right, for her to be this turned on and Klaus to be getting impatient.

"_Put in two of your fingers_," he cooed.

She did it, groaning at the stretch, that wonderful feeling of being filled. It wasn't entirely satisfied after the cock, but she pumped them in and out shortly, the heel of her hand grinding into her pubic bone to try and keep stimulating her poor fat clit.

"_Now_," he said pleasantly. "_If you have Klaus' fingers in you, and my cock on your tongue, you must be getting just a little overwhelmed. One of us can fuck you, now, and the other can support your body. Who would you like to fuck you?_"

She pulled the cock out of her mouth.

"I want you," she whimpered. "But Klaus - he'd hate me."

"_He could never hate you_," he said patiently.

"He wouldn't be alright with this," she said breathily. "Elijah - if - if he ever found out - he'd be so mad -"

"_It's alright_," he promised her.

"Oh my god, if he ever _finds out_-" she said suddenly, taking the phone in her hand as she sat, the dildo forced out of her body with the movement. "What are we doing? What am I _doing_?"

"_Caroline_," he said soothingly. "_It's alright. It's not the first time we've shared a lady. You're not going to hurt him by choosing me tonight_."

"He thought-!" she slapped her head. "Before. He thought - he thought I was into you - he freaked out. He freaked out and I hurt him because he thought I like, preferred you, or something? Oh my _god_. This was - Elijah, what are we doing? No. No, this was a mistake. This was a _mistake_ and I let it get this far and I'm _sorry_ \- I just - I was just - I was spooked and lonely and being a vindictive _bitch_ and I didn't mean to start something here but it can't - we can't - I can't -... not to Klaus."

_"Caroline,_" he tried.

"I have to tell him. I don't know what I'm gonna say. This can't - we can't do this any more. Oh my god." She held the bridge of her nose in pinching fingers that smelt like wet pussy, feeling herself bow down with regret written in every line of her slumped posture. "Elijah he's gonna kill you. He's gonna flip his fucking lid. He's gonna literally stab you."

"_He won't stab me_," he said patiently.

"And me?" her voice pitched. "He's gonna - he already won't even talk to me about something he did, what is he gonna do when I tell him something I did?"

"_Klaus wouldn't ever hurt you_," he told her firmly. "_You know how he feels about you_."

"Do I?" she demanded, yanking her panties up to storm to her bedroom door. Not sure where she was going to spend that angsty energy, but she moved to try and dispel it. In nothing but bra and panties, she felt watched, and immediately scampered back to pull on a t-shirt. "No, what I know is being with him made me feel safe. Being with him made me happy. We never, not once, talked about what we were. Or what he felt. I never even told him what I felt."

"_There was understanding between you_," he reminded her. "_Neither of you are transparent with your intentions."_

"I am!" she protested.

"_You couldn't even talk to me about_ _this_," he said firmly.

"That's different." She put her phone on her dresser, the headphones tangling as she scooped up some jeans and stepped into them, pulling them up quickly. "You and I are not _Klaus and I_."

"_So when were you and I going to talk?_" he said pleasantly.

"We aren't. It doesn't matter because this is never going to happen again," she said bluntly.

"_If that's what you want, then alright_," he said easily. She believed he'd let her go, if she told him that was what she wanted. It kind of stung that he didn't put up any kind of fight. "_But don't compare Klaus to this when you're part of the problem. You know he'd follow you to the ends of the earth."_

"Bullshit! He won't even talk to me now, and we're in the same damn city!" she snapped. "I'm right here, and where is he? No where. You know - you know since my mother died, I've been trying to feel like I'm living, again? I've just been struggling so hard for - life? Did you know he made me feel - like I was at least happy and safe, above being nervous or stressed or busy and he - now he's hurt me by literally killing one of my friends, and he can't even say sorry?"

"_Would it help if he told you he was sorry?_" Elijah pressed.

"Sorry doesn't fix a dead body!"

_"I understand that,"_ he said slowly. "_So what could he do to make it better?_"

"Let me yell at him?!" she guessed, her voice pitching. "He didn't even say _sorry_, Elijah!"

"_So you need his apology_," he estimated, ignoring her previous refusal. "_And you need to spend your rage."_

"I want him to be sorry," she said viciously, then stopped pacing. "He needs to mean it. If he doesn't mean it it'll be worse than nothing at all. And I think I know he won't be sorry, not really. Not ever. He's only even aware of it now because it's caused this fight between us."

"_Yes_," he agreed.

All her anger dribbled out of her head, at that easy recognition. If anyone knew Klaus, it was Elijah. If anyone could predict his mood, or know the hurt he could cause, it was Elijah.

She sat on the corner of her bed and held her head in her hand.

"I have to tell him that we did... this," she muttered. "It's not right."

"_Caroline_," he said softly. "_We didn't do anything wrong_."

"I still need to tell him," she said.

"_You don't_," he said, and this time she heard him swallowing. "_He already knows._"

"Knows?" she repeated. Her stomach dropped into her feet. "Knows what?"

"_About tonight_," he said quietly. "_Today, and yesterday. He knows what we did, and what we're doing."_

"What?" she breathed.

"_He's been getting the abridged version_," he murmured.

"You've been _telling_ him?" she hissed.

"_In a manner of speaking_," he said placidly. "_Last night you asked if I was alone. I told you I was in bed. I was in his bed with him. He's currently got my cock in his mouth. You're on loudspeaker."_

Her head spun in an entire circle.

What the fuck.

First of all, the incest was shocking in and of itself. Then the knowledge that Klaus had undoubtedly heard her outburst about his behavior was mortifying in a satisfactory way. Then, on top of all of that, the little bit of shame she'd had with sharing being a little kinky with Elijah- that hadn't been meant for Klaus' ears.

She burned in embarrassment, shame and mortification, and didn't know what to say.

"_Caroline?"_ Klaus' voice was rough. She flinched to think of his swollen mouth.

How would they be configured? Would Elijah be laying on his back? Would Klaus be hovering over him now? Or would Elijah keep Klaus on his knees? She wasn't sure Klaus knew how to kneel to another person, let alone his brother, for the purpose of sucking on his thick cock. But now hearing the way the elder brother spoke of his sexual activity... it couldn't possibly be that he was the submissive between them?

The photo of Elijah's dick flashed behind her lids. It had been wet with saliva. She'd assumed it had been his own.

What if it wasn't?

"_Caroline,_" Elijah said patiently. "_It's alright, sweetheart. Please breathe_."

"_Would you like me to come and get you?"_ Klaus suggested.

She hung up the phone. It... it was a lot. There was a lot in her brain.

The idea that they would come to get her was alarming. So, so alarming, to think they'd have to kill the new landlord to get in. She sat on the end of her bed and tapped out:

_Do not come to my apartment._

Elijah wrote:

_I won't. I know tonight has been a shock for you, and I apologize for the part I played in it. I'm also sorry for including my brother in our interlude without your knowledge or permission. We were already starting with each other when you and I began to play, and it was entirely my fault that I replied with anything less than a clear head. _

_Take your time to think. Please let me know when you want to talk._

Klaus only said:

_I won't chase you love. _

_Don't hate me._

Caroline burst into tears and pulled on the first clothes to hand, before she skipped quickly to the bedroom door.

She ran to Elena's made up bed and sobbed with her sleepy friend's arms closing around her, the anxious sound of her voice making Caroline cry harder. Betrayed. She was so betrayed.

She had finally opened that tiny kinky window to someone and it had been given to someone else without her permission. Elena and Bonnie didn't count - not when Elena liked bloodplay and Bonnie liked anal. It was just their kinky shit, right? Girls had needs.

But to trust someone with it? And to have it passed along?

And those someones were brothers who were apparently fucking?

"Caroline," Elena worried against her hair. "You okay?"

"No," she said.

"Did you talk to Elijah?"

"Yes!" Her voice shot into a different octave.

"It didn't go well..." Elena said softly. "Oh, Care..."

Caroline cried harder, snuggling into her tiny friend's embrace.

She laid there and kept checking the time on her phone until something like five hours later; when Elena had drifted again, but sleep escaped Caroline in favor of a headache. Although she tried to be sneaky, any amount of movement made Elena's grip tighten on her.

"You okay?" she asked roughly.

"I need Advil," she said thickly, shoving her phone in her pocket. "My head is killing me."

"Should I make tea?" Elena murmured.

"No, I'm-" she sniffed. "I'm just gonna get some water. And change these jeans. Can I sleep in here with you?"

"Yeah, of course," Elena said. "I'll wait up until you come back."

"Thanks," she said, and climbed off the sofa-bed, padding to the bathroom to get out her headache pills. She swallowed them down with some water and pressed cool fingers against her puffy eyes before blowing her nose on toilet paper and tossing it into the trash.

She went to her bedroom, flipping on the light. She knew one of them had left her a message to read when she woke but she had been crying when she'd received it. She dug out the phone and stared at it blankly as it opened.

Klaus had sent:

_The dalliances with my brother have been going on for hundreds of years, love. I don't expect you to understand nor condone them. If you could stop eating vervain tonight, I'll send someone to wipe the memory for you. Please._

_No, _she sent.

Her shocked brain warred with her trembling heart as to what needed tending first.

Her brain said: _Air! Cleaning! Make something clean! Ignore! Deflect! Regress this shit!_

But her heart said: _those two idiots are old enough to know better, but they're kind of the only idiots you like._

And then her brain spun to a slow churn when she noticed something a little off in the room.

Ordinarily, the dildo on the pillow would've meant nothing. She had been using one only a handful of hours before. The problem she had with it was it had _not_ been the one she was using.

This was something she knew for a fact, because the one sitting innocently on her pillow had a pronged butterfly sitting on the hilt of the dick, and it could not be sucked the way she had sucked the first.

Caroline stupidly thought that maybe Elena had done it.

But why would Elena have pulled out a sex toy?

And she couldn't have because... Caroline had been with her the entire time?

A chill crawled down her spine.

She went to her bedside and got out her taser, turning it on to hear the low buzz of electricity in her palm. Only there was none, because the pack attached to it was pulled off. It was not in her drawer, where she had left it. Without even thinking, she ran out of the room and smashed her fist into the lights in the lounge, going to check the taser in her bag.

"Stop," said a familiar voice.

She skidded to a halt, stinging eyes wide.

Elena was unconscious as she slid from his grip and bounced on the bed, all her hair in her face. There was a flash of a knife and the scrawny man looked at her without blinking, turning the blade around in his grip.

Her eyes made a quick trek from her friend's slack mouth to a wet cloth which he kept in the cup of his hand as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.

"Phillip?" she said hoarsely.

"Hi, Caroline," he muttered. He looked at the empty taser in her hand. "I hope you weren't gonna use that on me."

"What are you doing here?" was the only thing she could think to say.

"I've been here for a long time," he told her. He motioned upwards at the roof. "I've been with you."

She thought about trying to inch her way to her handbag and getting the weapon out. He must've read something on her face, because he turned the blade point down and held it over Elena's sleeping body.

"If you try anything," he warned her. "I'll rip her."

Caroline's hands went out like she was going to somehow placate the murderous look in his eyes.

"Okay, okay," she said shakily. "Just, just calm down, a second. What are you doing here?"

"I'm with you," he said again. His voice was bizarrely underwhelmed, considering the gravity of their situation. "You started fucking that guy and you left me, and then you brought a bit of him home. I saw how he made you come. I can do that for you. Be your daddy."

"No thanks," she said quickly. "We're - we're just friends, Phillip."

"If we're friends why did you help get me fired?" he demanded. "I liked that job. I liked seeing you there. I liked to be near you. And you got me fired. I had to go live with my mother. She's insane."

"Oh, I'm - I'm really sorry..." she started to walk forward. "Hey, so, can you put down that knife?"

"You won't listen to me without a knife," he reasoned. He put it down on Elena's hip and the sharp tip pierced her skin easily, immediately blooming with blood. It trickled to the side and started to spill onto her pale pink shorts, spreading red like a flower. "I can't make you listen to me without this knife."

"Okay," she said, and stopped walking toward him. She still had the taser in her hand, and, while it was useless as a weapon to zap with, it was fairly heavy. If he got in striking distance, she was gonna bludgeon him. "Okay. Well. I'm listening. What's up?"

"I want you to come home with me," was his very cordial reply.

"Uhm, why?"

"So I can tie you to my bed and get you pregnant." He flicked his eyes down at her crotch. "I know you're wearing something pretty under there for me. I know you didn't finish tonight. But I can make you come. I've been listening. I know what you like. All you have to do is have my babies."

"Oh," she said slowly. Like that was reasonable. "Uh, what happens if I say no?"

"You won't," he muttered. "Because if you won't, I'll take this one. She's not the one I wanted. I wanted you. But I'll take her."

"No, no, that's... that's not gonna happen," she said weakly. "Phillip, I don't really want to get pregnant, right now."

"It'll take a while," he murmured. He flicked his eyes to her breasts, the heave of her lacey bra under her shirt. "Erin isn't pregnant yet."

Caroline's whole world came to a stop.

"Erin?" she repeated in a squeak.

"Yeah," he said roughly. "We're not pregnant yet."

"How... How long've you...?" she felt her chin wobbling. "How long have you and Erin been-?"

"Fucking?" cooed a voice from behind her.

Caroline hit the floor with a shout and started flailing as her own taser punched into her shoulder. She spasmed on the floor for ten seconds, everything tightening painfully, before Phillip had the dripping, acidic cloth over her mouth and nose and Erin stopped pulling the trigger.

"I was so jealous of you," Erin said dangerously, her knee in Caroline's back, as she bound Caroline's wrists in ropes.

Caroline screamed but it made little noise, and only served to flood her mouth with the chemical in the cloth. She choked and tried to hold her breath against it but Erin dug her knee hard into her spine and made her cry out.

"You didn't even blink at my man and you had him around your little finger. Perfect bubbly Caroline," she sneered. "Do you know what that's like, to love a man who wants to get another girl in his bed?"

Caroline started to cry. Her head was pulled so far back she was already struggling to breathe, but the cloth around her mouth and the knee weighing on her lungs didn't help.

"Yeah, you said that," he murmured, and touched Caroline's brow. "But she'll make us pretty babies, Erin. Little blonde ones. With big eyes. Just like her."

Erin grunted and tightened the ties around Caroline's wrists painfully. She climbed off her back and took a swing with her shoe, kicking the air out of her guts.

For a long few seconds she was too winded to scream, and then when she could breathe she inhaled enough air that her head started to get very, very dizzy.

"I hated you, you know," Erin went on. "You. All your friends. Everyone loves precious pretty Caroline. What's an Erin next to you?"

Another hard swing had Caroline kicking her legs, tears spilling, her precarious breath lost to her. Apparently taking pity, Phillip hauled her upright against his chest, cupping her tit in his hand, then her belly, and then her crotch. He popped open the button and shoved his hand inside roughly, curling his fingers to drag them through the mess that she hadn't spent.

He pulled his hand out and stuck his wet fingers straight into his mouth, sucking shortly before going down to feel her tit again.

"And you don't even try," Erin went on bitterly. "You don't even have to try to be this perfect. Men just want you. Women just want to be friends with you. You get what you want as long as you bat your eyes, don't you? Fuck you. Fuck _you_. I did hate you, you know, but now I don't as much. Now, I want your babies. I want my man to fuck you so hard you can't sit right, because at the end of the day, he doesn't want you,_ he wants me_, he just wants babies that look like you!"

Caroline stared to blur. She wasn't sure what was happening - it felt like Phillip's hands were everywhere at once, like he was squeezing her boobs and belly and between her legs with more than five left hands. The other stayed over her face, burning tears into her eyes, and not long after Erin's voice became nonsense she found herself rolling in an abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \Shrieking into the abyss like a pterodactyl\


	7. Oh Such Young Skin

It wasn't much later that she started to come to, but she didn't have the coherence to do anything as the ties were cut from behind her back and relocated up above her head. She was laying out flat and her head was pillowed, and someone peeled off her jeans and snipped through the fabric of her shirt.

"Stop," she said through jello.

"Phil tells me you're fucking the brothers," said another too familiar voice. "Is one of them Elijah?"

Her eyes weren't focusing right, but she could still make out her boss.

"Cheryl?" she murmured.

"You told me you lived alone," she chided. "Who was the girl?"

"Friend," her absent brain supplied. "Is she-?"

"She's completely unhurt. She was starting to come to. Don't worry, we only wanted you," Cheryl said. "To make pretty grand babies. Phil was smitten with you, you know, and he wanted so badly to make me introduce you but I said, I said _no, Phil, you go do it yourself! She'll like that!_ And he got a job with you just to make those introductions but you weren't interested in him... A shame."

Caroline's eyes made out her shape leaning above her. She shut her eyes at the horrible spin of her head and frowned, twisting her sluggish wrists in what felt like rope.

"Now Erin is gone for a minute to go clean up some loose ends," Cheryl said. "And Phil is - getting ready for you in the next room. The rules are only that he - and do pardon my language - that he only _inserts_ and _ejaculates_, and then he must leave. I'm to tend you before and after, alright? They tell me you're already wet, now. Do you want some extra lube? My boy's a little large."

Caroline blinked open her eyes.

"Please leave," she said slowly.

"Oh, you're shy. That's okay. That'll change." She dropped a hand onto Caroline's stomach and sighed softly. "Oh such young skin. Enjoy it before he gets you pregnant, won't you? This will all change." She stroked her, tickling the belly button, before leaning down to kiss her brow and move beyond what Caroline's hazy eyes could see.

And so there she was. Tied to a bed. In her prettiest underwear, half out of it on drugs. She was alone and ungagged, which made her think that she might be the first.

The good news was, Caroline had been tied to beds before. And she was always impatient. So early on, she learned how to slip bondage, and these knots were not at all difficult to do it.

The bad news was how absolutely _high_ she was. She could barely see straight, but she made out the vague pitched roof of an attic space, a small wastebasket in the corner, her jeans in a pile by the door.

She got up slowly, holding the angled roof above her head, and carefully moved to stand beside the door, bending slowly to bump her backside against the rough wall. It sung with pain, and made her mind a little sharper.

She carefully redressed her bottom half, buttoning shut the jeans with determined, shaky fingers, then bent and picked up the wastebasket. Her back to the wall beside the door, she turned the bottom end with the hard metal edge outward, adjusted her sweaty grip, and waited.

She didn't have to wait long.

She bashed Phillip right in the bridge of his nose with the hard steel of the bin, making his head shoot back on his neck. She felt the burst of his cartilage under her swing and didn't stop to consider the blood spraying when she swung again.

He shouted and fell, flailing uselessly, falling down some deeply inclined stairs. It was too dark for Caroline's drugged mind to really understand, but what she did was simply fall down them on top of him, landing on all the soft squishy bits to add insult to his injury.

Stumbling once she rose, she took that same wastebasket in hand and swung it at Cheryl's temple, knocking the bitch down with a single swipe. The way the woman dropped was really, really alarming, but Caroline...

Caroline was high and frightened, and didn't give a shit that she was completely floppy as she dropped.

On the way out she snagged a coat that was too big on her, and left the door open once the brisk morning air was in her lungs. She glanced back up at the place she'd come from and recognized it as the Library. As in, her place of work.

So what the fuck. How exactly had they been planning to keep her quiet? Ugh. Amateurs.

She knew the closest place would be the compound and so to the compound she went.

Luckily, there was so much adrenaline and maybe chloroform in her system that she couldn't feel the sharp sting of broken glass when it punctured her feet. In another stroke of good luck, the Mikealsons didn't really have a need to lock their front door when they were home and she was glad for it. By the time she stumbled into the courtyard, both of them were there, confused as they braced themselves over the railing of the upper floor.

"Someone," she said, trembling, looking between them both. "Was in my apartment."

"Again?" Klaus seethed. He slammed his hands against the banister. "I told those imbeciles to lock your door securely! To spell it that no one unknown to you may cross it's threshold!"

"Well," she sank to her knees. "I knew them."

"The Salvatores?" Elijah guessed.

"Work people," she muttered, then looked at him with huge eyes. "Elijah, they - Elena- she's still there-"

"Elena?" Klaus repeated.

"I'll get her," the elder promised, and sped past to get in the car.

Caroline shook on the floor and startled when Klaus' feet crossed her vision, even though he'd made every effort to make noise on his approach. She looked up with tears in her eyes and her lower lip jutting out.

"Hey," she said, wobbly.

"Hello," he said quietly, and sank into a crouch. "Are you alright?"

"No." When she shut her eyes, all her tears broke away and fell over her cheeks. She reached up to dab her face and smelled blood. A quick look at her hands confirmed that they were covered in the spray... she was pretty sure it was Phillip's, but it could've been Cheryl's.

"You fought them," Klaus said, taking her hands, unrolling her tightly clenched fingers.

"I broke his nose," she said softly. She was blinking a lot. A lot. Tears were happening and she couldn't stop them. "He chloroformed me. I think."

He leaned forward and took a quick breath in by her face. His mouth twisted and he knelt before her, his hands still wrapped around her bloodied ones.

"He did," he confirmed. And for some reason, that made her start to cry with real heaving sobs. She tried to take her hands away from him to hide her face but he didn't let go - he pressed his mouth to her palms and murmured soothing words into her skin.

He knelt up tall and pulled her head to his chest with the demand of someone not entirely used to consoling anyone, pressing a dry kiss to her hair. She wept even more at the show of affection - no matter how small, she would absorb it like a sponge.

"Give me your hands, love," he murmured, and she presented them to his scrutiny. "You made quite the impact as ever, I see."

She startled but did not protest when the gentle words turned into a hot, wet mouth. She felt each finger get an equally slow drag as he sucked them clean, keeping her hands close to his face. She exhaled a big breath and rubbed her temple against the pound of Klaus' heart, feeling him smooth his hand over her hair, then planted her chin on the center of his chest and watched him lick the blood off her skin.

"Big day," she muttered, taking her clean hands back under her too-big coat.

"Huge," he agreed. He flicked his eyes over her shoulder. "What happened to your feet?"

"I ran through glass," she said, shutting her eyes tight. She nestled against his shoulder and breathed in the earthy smell of him deep in her lungs to cast out the acid from the chloroform she'd inhaled earlier. "It didn't hurt then."

"It's hurting now?" he murmured, and dropped a long kiss to the top of her hair.

"It's getting worse as I sit here..." she said.

"You know that whoever is behind this will pay dearly," Klaus said off-handedly. "You said you know them?"

She nodded and gave him the names. Her eyes were still shut, and the stroking of her hair felt wonderful, even if the sharp pains in her feet began to sear up into her nerves. She clutched at his soft t-shirt and tried to roll onto her backside, but jolted up onto her hip as soon as she touched the ground.

"Sore," she muttered, and realized a big part of her shame was that he knew why. She felt the lack of blood in her face begin to filter down in a terrific roaring. Glancing at him revealed his sheepish eyes, half-lidded, already watching her shy away from him.

"I'll need to get the glass out of your feet before I can heal you," he informed her softly.

"Okay," she said, because what else was she going to say?

He took her in his arms and she hung onto his shoulders with her cheek pressed to his shirt, brain still fuzzy and betrayed and a little frightened.

He set her down on the end of his bed and was very quick and very careful to pull out the two longer shards with his fingers, both clicking as they hit the ground beside him.

"I'll need something smaller to get the rest."

"M'okay," she told the wall behind him.

He moved in a blur to collect the supplies, and returned to his task on his knees.

"I know you should be distracted," he told her, lifting her foot by the ankle to inspect her sole. "Will you be distracted by talking to me about what happened tonight?"

"I think he was in the roof," she said timidly. "I think he was living there when I was here. His mother... my boss at the library... she was asking about Elijah. How strong he was. If you were stronger. If we were living together. I think she was asking so that they made sure it was only me, but Elena was there too."

"She'll be alright," he said. He cleared his throat, pinching the first glass piece without looking up at her. "But that wasn't what I meant."

"What did you have in mind?" her voice came out all weird and pitchy.

"I meant about before that," he said quietly. "The phone call."

"Oh, you wanted to talk about how you two just wanted to get all my kinks and get me in on your ancient incest sex," she said shrilly. "Sure! Why not! This night is the best night of my life!"

"If you're embarrassed about the role you and Elijah fell into, you shouldn't be," he soothed. "He is very good at it."

"Like you would know," she retorted.

"I know," he promised her. "Believe me, love. He told you he has a type. Why exactly do you think it's- what did he phrase it as? Stubborn and clingy?"

"Difficult," Caroline murmured. "And needy."

"Potato, pot-ah-to," Klaus retorted. "He developed such a type from spending his energy on _me_. He really can make it pleasant enough to make you want to obey, when he starts to punish you. Both because it's so good, and because it's so good for too long. Come to think of it, he hasn't punished me in years. Possibly because I don't deserve."

Caroline swallowed.

"You two..." she said softly. "You two really...?"

"Fuck? Yes. For a long time, now. Several lifetimes. It isn't always so thoroughly debauched, in the event you were wondering. Sometimes we can be kind to one another. Not often, but sometimes."

"Oh."

She was in a lot of pain - not all of it physical - and she just wanted to turn inward on herself to turn it out.

But Klaus, of course, wasn't going to have it.

"Why did you tell me no?"

"What?" she grunted, tightening her hands in his bed at a particularly sharp pain of extraction.

"I told you I'd have the memories of tonight removed," he said. "You told me no."

"I don't know," she said, and yanked her foot up at a pain. "_Ow_."

"It's nearly done," he said, holding out his hand to retake her injured limb.

"For just one foot!" she grumbled. "I have two! And it hurts!"

"It's the worst between them," he placated, and flexed his fingers. "Recall I let you dig around in my shoulder with pliers. I'm being careful as I can. Come on."

With a resigned breath, she put her foot in his hand and rubbed her damp brow, still smelling copper blood in the creases of her fingers.

"I used to rally against the threats," Klaus continued lowly, to all visual cues completely encompassed in his work. "He used to tell me I'd go over his knee when I did something particularly egregious, and I always thought he was just making it seem like he had a say in what I did. The first house I ever set alight and locked the inhabitants in - he had me stand corrected. I didn't heal that entire night, his hand was so heavy."

"He told me he didn't punish when he was mad," Caroline said quickly.

"That would be why. That and the next time he had me hauled over his lap; he had my arm twisted in such a way I couldn't get loose but to break the bone," Klaus went on. "The first time I was in shock, yes, and through that I found submission. The second time I was expecting it somewhat, and I was steaming mad. I nearly dislocated my own arm several times until I spat out my apologies to escape the torment."

"What did you do?"

"It was too long ago to remember. All I knew was Kol and Rebekah watching in awe. My arse under their eyes. I was humiliated," Klaus amended. He pressed a kiss on Caroline's knee, bending to do it. "After that, I used to test him. See what I could get away with, that would satisfy my craving for blood and his need for control. Once I began to _let him_ hurt me, things became truly complicated."

"So it started out as..." she thought of how best to phrase it. "An older brother, keeping a younger brother in line."

"Yes."

"You were embarrassed."

"Enough that it made my whole head spin," he agreed. He patted the top of her foot and she lifted the other to him, feeling his warm hand support her Achilles' heel. "But when I started to test - to see where the boundaries were. It excited me. First in an innocent way, making him so cross with my behavior."

"But it got complicated," she prompted.

"It did," Klaus agreed. "When I submitted willingly - when I pushed him to threaten and then to hold me down without me struggling at my full capacity, and to strike me without me ever lifting a hand back... I liked it a little too much. Power is a fickle thing."

"I can't see you ever giving up control," she muttered.

"It isn't _my_ control that's the delicious part, love." He plucked a shard that made her flinch, and murmured an apology, lifting her foot to press his mouth to the tender skin. His lips came away red, and he licked them, staring over her toes into her eyes. "I can fight him, and I can win."

"How did it change?" she whispered, almost wincing to feel herself convinced by this story. The way he was speaking was so - unlike himself. He didn't seem in any way bragging or arrogant. Only matter-of-fact. She saw the undercurrents of a long held shame threaded in his words, like if he removed himself he wouldn't feel that way.

She knew it because she still felt her horrible shame for uttering the word _daddy_, and having someone hear it.

"The first time I grew aroused from the feel of his hand," Klaus told her, inspecting her foot resolutely. "The pain was only fleeting. It was when he tended the hits with so gentle a hand - that he wounded me, then cared for me. That rub of abused skin under a palm that had been so cruel. It flooded my entire body with want; and then he sent me away to spill in privacy."

"He knew it turned you on?"

"He didn't know why."

She looked at him from under her lashes.

"Did you?"

He smiled at her, shaking his head.

"Then the second time, when I had laid out wrong upon him, I had my cock trapped between my belly and his thigh. Every strike blessed and cursed me to rut against him. I don't even think I was breathing, for most of it."

"Did...?" Caroline swallowed. Her eyes were tight with pain, but focused on him, and the dedicated way he was inspecting her foot. "Did you end up coming?"

"He spanked me until I fucked against him to completion, yes. It was a good time," Klaus teased. "I shot all over his trousers. It was a mess. He didn't even comment on it, just tore the shirt off my shoulders and wiped himself down with it. It was so dismissive."

Caroline licked her lips. A previously untended frisson of heat flared up in between her legs.

"Did you like that?"

"My pleasure being ignored?" He arched a brow. "I didn't at the time. Do you?"

"Uhm-" voice broke. "Maybe?"

"Oh my," he said, amused.

"Shut up." She squirmed under his look, leaning back on her elbows on the bed. It spread the too-big coat on her, revealing her breasts. She would've needed to be blind and stupid to miss the longing look he cast on the tit that had been marked with Elijah's insistent mouth. "So... you were telling me..."

"The third time he punished me I did it on purpose," Klaus recalled, and looked back at her foot, pulling a sharp shard out of her damaged flesh. "I'd been fucking in his bedroom; on his bed, on the love seat, by the fire. Everything permeated of come and blood. When he came to me to share that grievance, I suggested he put me over his knee to prove his mood was true. But he denied me initially. He tried to leave. We brawled until I was put - by the hair, mind - over his lap. I fixed my cock out and he let me come again."

"Even after you came before?"

"I didn't come," he assured her. "I fucked and I fucked hard, for hours. Every known position. I may even invented a few. But I didn't allow myself to come - I wanted to pretend I was hard from it before he saw me."

"Why?"

"I was still mortified," Klaus remembered somberly. "All I wanted was his hand. The feel of the care he would give when we were done. That gentle tone in his voice. I wanted to feel made to bow - but I needed it to be safe. I felt no where safer than at the hands of my brother, and I was shamed by it. How desperately I wanted him. That satisfaction none other can bring. Could you imagine how I could've asked, if I had not pushed?"

He let small specs of glass tinkle to the stone floor. Caroline watched him, let him reminisce.

"He didn't want to play into my games, after that. I stabbed Finn and suddenly I was hauled back over his knee. At first I thought I was getting my way - you can imagine my surprise when he actually hurt me. I stopped trying to rile him to earn my punishment very soon thereafter," Klaus informed her. "That was nine hundred years ago, and I flinch to think of it even now. If I could've kept the bruising I wouldn't have walked right for a week, maybe more. I was horrified at the pain and made so solemn by the fury, but I could do nothing against it. I had hurt the family, and I had been hurt by family to remedy it. It felt just."

"Was it just his hand?"

"Always," Klaus murmured, lowering her foot between them. "Anything else rings too much of my father to encourage my pleasure."

She swallowed a hard mouthful.

"You're clear of glass," he said, and stood, eyeballing her pretty bra and her lazy recline back on the bed. "Would you like me to feed you?"

"You know I hate the taste of blood," she said weakly.

"What if I distracted you?" he said softly. "With a memory of when we started to reciprocate?"

She nodded dumbly. She wanted to know, but not to speak, to ruin that trance he had put over her. It felt almost like a spell, or a drug. It also could've been the hit of Chloroform she'd taken earlier, but probably not.

He tucked her hair behind her ear, surveying her expression, then cast her mind adrift in time.


	8. Oh Fuck

She saw it, the way Elijah turned around from dumping his jacket and vest over the back of a chair, his brow gleaming with sweat. Klaus was already laid on his back on the bed, one hand behind his head, the other tending the swollen cock laying up against his belly.

"Niklaus," Elijah warned.

"You're not done," Klaus said, voice scratchy.

"I am not. Roll over." When that inspired absolutely no obedience, Elijah bared his teeth. "Brother, you are not far out from being finished, here. Roll over, that I may continue and let you leave."

"I want to watch you," Klaus drawled. He lifted his hand to spit onto it, and fisted his cock, a slow smile growing on his face. "I want to see what you look like when you bestow upon me your punishment. If you enjoy it half as much as I suspect you do."

"_No_," Elijah said thickly. He strode to the bed and tried to take Klaus by the knee and force him onto his front. He did not go where he was put. Elijah grabbed both his calves and knocked them downward, making Klaus' feet slap against the stones to plant himself like a tree, hips tilted to show off his long hard cock. "Let go of yourself. You're being obscene."

"Am I?" he taunted.

"Yes," Elijah said tightly. "Let it go."

Klaus did as he was told, putting that hand up behind his head to join it with the other. He watched with half lidded, gleaming eyes as Elijah's attention went to the spit-slick dick, standing dead straight along his belly.

"I've spent my seed on you before, brother," Klaus reminded him. "You let me rut against you like a little bitch to earn it. Who is the obscene one, indeed?"

"Ni_klaus_," the elder warned him. "Put up your legs, or roll over."

Klaus put up his legs again, this time hooking them with his forearms under his knees. He waited in defiance, staring him down, knowing the battle was already won before Elijah had even put up a defense.

Gritting his teeth so that his fantastic jaw clenched, Elijah crossed the space between them, yanking his sleeves up to the creases in his elbows. He'd sweated through rings under his pits and in a small blotch on his back. He wiped his face on his forearm and stood between the loosely propped feet, knocking one out of his way.

"I'll give you more for being difficult," he said darkly. "Turn around now and I'll change my mind."

Klaus' grin was absolutely a madman's. He didn't say anything, just opened his legs a little wider, bringing his knees a little closer to his chest to show off more of his glowing red ass.

Elijah drew back his hand and let fly. The first slap was barely done ringing in the room when the second one fell in the exact same place, making Klaus arch a little but keep his quiet, and his grin. The smack of the next hit didn't sound loud, but it sounded like it hurt deeper than the others, and the smile dropped.

Elijah did not let up. He let the blows fall hard and fast for maybe two full minutes, then bent over the open legs and tried to catch his breath, supported by one hand on the bed above Klaus' shoulder. The sweat had beaded on his brow and now dripped onto Klaus' chest, where he hung his head. He hit Klaus from the bent position, which missed his ass and landed high on the back of his leg, causing Klaus to cry out hoarsely.

"That _hurt_," he growled.

Elijah rubbed it, still standing bent over his body.

Caroline could see, just beyond the long curtain of his hair, that his eyes were fixed on Klaus' hard length. He rubbed the back of his brother's thigh with much kinder touch, circling his palm to draw it lower, feeling the hot skin in his grip.

Klaus grunted and arched a little, his prick flexing, bumping against the front of Elijah's shirt.

"What is it, Niklaus?" he murmured, his head still down. "What is it that you like? Is it that you're naked? Is it the pain? Is it that you feel shamed, when I hit you?"

"No." Klaus' throat bobbed with a swallow. He let his knees down, hands drifting to his brother's shirt, slowly, as though he was scared Elijah may startle and leave. When he did not, he pulled it off, ripping it straight down the back, letting it fall onto his chest.

He tossed it aside and put his hand up to the center of Elijah's chest.

"I don't understand," Elijah said, lifting his heavy head to look him in the eyes. "I don't know why you let me do this. Why do you let me hurt you?"

"You don't hurt me badly," Klaus muttered, smoothing his hands through the gathered sweat up to the back of Elijah's neck. "It's not like when father used to beat me. He hated me. You don't."

"Of course I don't hate you." Elijah appeared to try and resist the pull against his nape, but crumpled at the persistence of it, propping his weight on his elbows. His eyes wide, he glanced down between them, where Klaus' dick was wedged against his belly. "Klaus - you're my little brother-"

"I know," he said softly, and swiped back all the hair from Elijah's face. "You think I don't know how twisted this is?"

"I can feel your pulse in your prick," Elijah said through his teeth. "Let me up."

To reply to this, Klaus closed his open knees around his brother's waist, and locked his ankles at the small of his back. He kept one hand clamped on the nape of Elijah's neck, the other in a claw on his back.

"I'm not playing your game," Elijah said, firming his tone. "Let me up."

"No," Klaus said, though it was soft. "You hurt me tonight, brother. It is no game that I suggested we play."

Elijah tried to knock the hands away but they tightened in grip, until he bowed his head against his will to Klaus' chest.

"_Niklaus_-"

"Make me feel better," Klaus murmured. "You're supposed to make me feel better, now that you're done. That's what you do. You hurt me and then you make it feel good again."

Elijah exhaled a breath that sounded remarkably like a sob. He stopped trying to resist the hand on the back of his neck and shifted his weight all on to one elbow, reaching below Klaus' leg to rub the sore flesh.

Klaus' eyes rolled shut, and though his face crumpled in pain, it also looked like sheer joy. His lips popped open and he arched his body, rubbing his hardness between his brother's belly and his own, flexing shortly into the embrace.

Elijah dipped between the legs locking him in, pulling mightily from the grip, but put his hands under Klaus' knees to get him to keep his legs in the air. The eye contact was so bold between them, Caroline felt like _she_ should look away. Then Elijah sank slowly to his knees, and pressed a small kiss against one glowing red ass cheek.

Klaus licked his lips, and licked them again, hands in claws on the bed.

Elijah pressed another wet kiss to his ass, and rubbed the other with his hand. He moved to pay the attention all over, fingers grazing the seam of his balls.

"_'Lijah_," he said, stressed, belly flexing to sit up.

"What?"

Klaus didn't say anything, and Elijah didn't stop kissing his sore backside. He took Klaus by the hips and moved him back on the bed an inch to make sure his lower back was supported but his butt was free, then gave the tiniest of licks in the center of one cheek.

Klaus grunted. One hand drifted lazily down to his cock and started to stroke. He spat into his hand and stroked a little faster as Elijah's tongue grew more bold. Before long, those careful licks moved upward to his balls, where he carefully ran his tongue along the soft skin.

Elijah licked at him with a shy, though determined pace, one hand kneading his sore skin. The other tugged loose the tie around his own trousers and dipped in to jerk at himself.

"You - you -" Klaus said. "'Lijah, _Elijah_, brother -"

"If you want to finish-" Elijah murmured, raising to take his pistoning hand in his own grasp. Klaus keened loudly and tried to buck his hips into the circle of his fist, making Elijah unearth his other hand to pin down his hip. "Brother. Brother listen to me."

"Fuck," is what Klaus could manage to say. "Fuck, your tongue."

"Tell me you won't do anything like that again," he said gently. "Tell me you won't behave so abominably. There could've been children -"

"There _weren't_ -" Klaus groaned.

"But they're could have been," Elijah said firmly. He took Klaus' hand away from his dick and leaned over him on the bed, narrowing his eyes. "Tell me, brother. Tell me you won't be so reckless with innocent lives again."

Klaus gritted his teeth.

"With children," he bartered. "I won't - I won't risk - children - again. You have my - my word."

"Beautiful," Elijah said, and rubbed his sore ass. "Yes. Alright. Spend yourself."

"Brother," Klaus said, catching his arm. "Your tongue, please."

"Where?"

"On me," Klaus groaned. "On me. Please. I'll behave. I'll behave all you like. Please. Your tongue."

Elijah considered him, jerking his hardness, the desperate pull and shiny head poking through the top of his fist. He stared for a long time before dipping back between his thighs, running his tongue over Klaus' balls and lower, to the untouched skin that his vicious spanking had not marred.

Caroline could see from her vantage point the trembling in Klaus as Elijah moved so gently over him. How he seized up and screwed up his face, like it was too much and not enough. He free hand went between his legs to take Elijah's hair in his fist, a grunt sounding off when the elder did not press his tongue where it was steered.

Boldly, Elijah pulled open one cheek, staring into Klaus' unblemished hole, his mouth slack.

"Please?" Klaus let a rush of breath burst past his lips, legs trembling in the air.

"You want me to lick you?" Elijah confirmed, running his knuckle over the sensitive skin, stopping to circle the tight ring with his fingertip. He looked fascinated. "You want me to lick you like you're some girl?"

The groan made Caroline all hot and sweaty. Klaus looked fucked out, desperate, and there was new color filling his high cheekbones. He tilted his head back so that she could see him swallowing, his adam's apple bobbing as he tried to keep his noises contained.

Elijah, on the other hand, was laser focused on the reaction. He wet his lips and watched Klaus' face, gently circling the tight muscle with his fingertip.

"What was that? Do you want me to get you nice and wet?" Elijah went on, sounding almost cordial. He peered over Klaus' desperate jerking and put his hand down around his own hardness, wincing at the grip of himself. "You want to be slick like a fucking woman, Niklaus?"

Klaus started to fuck his fist in earnest.

Elijah locked his forearm down over his abdomen, under the red cock, and spread the cheeks again.

At Klaus' gurgling he leaned over and bit into one cheek with flat teeth, making him shout. He bucked up and twisted around, but Elijah never let him go. He opened up the cheek again, his fingers leaving cruel white semi circles in the red skin of his ass.

"Tell me what you want," Elijah goaded.

"Lick," Klaus begged. "Please, your tongue."

"Where?" Elijah cooed, blowing cool air on abused skin. "Here?" He licked a daring stripe over his ass.

"In," Klaus growled.

"In where?" he parted the cheek anew to see the asshole, and rubbed a dry finger over it. "You want me to get you nice and wet, brother? Like some little fling you pick up on the side of the road?"

"Lick," Klaus begged. "In. Inside. Please."

"Like a what?" Elijah prompted.

"Like a whore," Klaus choked.

"No, no, no. You want me to lick you here, get it nice and wet?" He pressed his fingertip against the hole and watched with an open mouth as it gave under the pressure, eyes flicking up to Klaus as he shouted and tried to fuck himself down on the intrusion. "You tell me how I should."

"Please," Klaus said, and Caroline was surprised to hear how desperate he was - he sounded close to tears. "Elijah, please, your tongue, don't make me say, please don't make me say, I'll behave, I'll behave, please, I'll do better, just use your tongue-"

"Like a?" Elijah said, sounding amused.

Klaus might've made a noise like weeping.

"Brother," Klaus choked.

"You want to be wet like a?" Elijah said. When there was no noise, he took his finger away with a disappointed sigh.

"L-Like a girl," Klaus stuttered. "Get me wet like a girl, lick me until I'm wet, please, please get me wet like a girl."

"Oh, beautiful," Elijah murmured, and stuck his whole tongue out, dragging it up and down wetly over Klaus' trembling hole. He shook his head and held open the red hot ass with one hand, his forearm still preventing any escape, and flicked his tongue over the sensitive skin inside.

Caroline watched Klaus' ass clench for something, and watched Elijah see it too, firming up his tongue before pressing it against the hole until it gave around the prodding, just a little.

Klaus came with a roar, bucking against the curious intrusion. Elijah held open one thigh and let the hybrid ride his stuck out tongue, his eyes shut while Klaus stroked the last dregs of his come out of his cock and put his head back, breathing hard and fast.

Elijah kissed each cheek, planting an unkind bite on the center of one, before he rose to stand. Almost dazedly, he opened up Klaus' knees, eyes focused on the pulse of Klaus' thick vein as it continued to wring yet more come out on his belly, then down to the parted crack, where his asshole shined in the light, squeezing and releasing.

He swallowed and took a step back with a look over his shoulder, presumably to gather his clothes and leave.

Klaus put his legs back around his brother's waist, shaking his head, cock still visibly shooting a string of come into the dribbled pool of it on his stomach.

"Nik," Elijah said gently, rubbing his thigh. "We're done now."

"You got what you wanted," Klaus muttered into the arm he'd thrown over his face. "Now you don't want me any more."

"It's not that," he said patiently.

"You don't want to be around me."

"I'll see you in the morning."

"I don't want you to go," Klaus said angrily. "You just - you just made me say such - lewd - twisted - you just made me do some -... You don't have _leave_ to go. I _forbid it_."

"Nik, I know these things we do aren't..." he searched for a word, but none came. He rubbed trembling thighs and exhaled quietly. "I know neither of us are in our right mind. But you have given me your word, and for that I am thankful. You have done a wonderful, brilliant thing, and it's over now. I must tend my business elsewhere."

"Your business?" Klaus lifted his arm to frown at him, sweaty and red-faced. "What business?"

"Private matters," Elijah assured him, trying to pry a leg from his waist.

"What matters are private between us?" he said, getting up onto his elbows. "You just had your tongue in my arse."

Elijah flushed a brilliant red, right to the roots of his hair.

"It won't happen again," he told the roof.

"If it doesn't, I'll never let you hit me," Klaus warned. "I only let you hit me because you pay me back in kindness."

"By letting you spill?" Elijah confirmed.

"Obviously," Klaus drawled. He shifted his legs and Elijah's trousers rasped against his ass, which made him cringe - but it was also echoed in Elijah's face. He brought him in again with a grunt of discomfort, but at the clamp of Elijah's hands on his knees, realized his 'business'. "You're aroused."

"No," Elijah said quickly. "No. No I'm not."

"Yes you bloody _are_. You're hard for me!" he accused. "For hitting me, brother? Or from seeing me come? Or from licking me?"

"I'm not," Elijah protested, trying in earnest to brush aside his brother's legs.

Klaus rectified their positions quicker than Caroline's brain could comprehend. He laid out on top of Elijah on the floor, smearing his come between them, his knees trapping Elijah's thigh open. He held Elijah's face in his hands, frowning slightly, then leaned down and pressed a gentle kiss to his lip.

Elijah's eyes were wide and his hands flat at his sides. He dropped his attention to Klaus' retreating mouth and swallowed thickly.

"You're hard," Klaus murmured, rubbing his body between his legs, pressing a small kiss to his cheek. "Let me serve you."

"Klaus," Elijah said, hands flying to his hair as if to stop him. "Niklaus, I don't need to be served. You don't need to - Klaus, brother, I don't need to -"

Klaus had moved down his body with liquid grace, pulling open the very seam of his trousers, and sucked him into his mouth. Elijah's fingers gripped his hair and he opened his mouth but nothing came out. He shut his eyes and let his head fall back with a thud, bracing his feet on the floor. A crease appeared in his brow and his head rolled back, exposing his throat.

"Klaus," he said, choked. "You don't have to."

"I want to," Klaus promised him softly. "Will you let me if I want to do it?"

"It's wrong," he lamented, cringing to look down, see his little brother with open lips and his rock hard prick standing between them. "God almighty, Klaus. It's so wrong."

"Will you let me, brother?" Klaus said again, seemingly shy. "Will you let me serve you, the way you serve me, when you hurt me?"

Elijah's throat attempted to make noise, but all that came out was a strangled wheeze. He pulled on Klaus' hair and steered him up, leaving his cock in Klaus' determined hand.

"I hurt you because I need you to be a better man, never for pleasure," Elijah said weakly. He stroked Klaus' hair away from his face and kept petting it, even when it was away and no longer falling.

"You hurt me because you think I can be better," Klaus acknowledged. "You make me feel so small, brother."

Elijah swallowed.

"I never mean to make you small," he said softly.

"I know." He hesitated and then lowered his lids over his eyes, inches away from Elijah's mouth. He hovered just out of reach, his hand beginning to move up and down on the thick uncut cock. "I don't feel small when you look after me, when you're done. I don't feel like there's no power in my hands and that I must always obey you, or that my mind is broken because I always do so wrong. I don't feel like I'm in pieces right now, the way I do when it really hurts, or it feel too good to be true. Sometimes you make it feel like hell, when it's good, and I pray you make it hurt again so I know we are real."

Elijah grunted through his teeth as Klaus' fist began to move quicker still. It was becoming dry but Elijah didn't protest, his hips shifting to assist the effort.

"Do you... feel like that now?"

"I feel like that when you hurt me," he confessed. He pressed a long kiss to the side of Elijah's neck. "I don't feel like that when you look after me, when you're done. But when you leave... when you leave it's worse. I need you most then, I need you to be with me, and you cannot look on my face for the shame."

Elijah pulled his chin over to press a kiss to his mouth.

"I am never ashamed of you," he promised thickly.

"But you always leave," Klaus pointed out.

"I have to tend..." he cast his eyes down, where Klaus was pumping him steadily, fist closing around the tip in such a way his eyes rolled in his head. "You're - you've been - fucking other men..."

"Sometimes Kol and I team up on them," he agreed. "Sometimes we race to see who can make them spill first."

"Kol will fuck anything," Elijah told the roof.

"But I won't?"

"No," was the firm reply.

"Even if I wanted your tongue in me?" he murmured softly, eyes wide and shiny. "Even if I want your cock in my mouth now to keep you here?"

"I'll stay," Elijah promised, taking his face in his hands. "Niklaus, I didn't know how you felt. I do now. I'll be better for you, brother. I'll be here for you after. You need not sway me with - service." He looked pointedly at the hand tugging at his swollen cock.

"You've not been listening," Klaus whispered. "I want to."

There was a pause while Elijah let that thought rattle around in his head. Then he laid his head back down on the floor, and nodded to himself, and tangled his finger's in Klaus' long mane.

"Dry," he murmured. "Your hand. It's too dry."

Klaus delivered another kiss to his mouth and sank down his body again. He pressed quick, dry kisses over his brother's besmirched stomach as he went, tasting his own seed. He took the cock into his mouth and Elijah groaned loudly, squeezing his eyes shut as the very wide tip of him was encompassed by a hot, wet mouth.

"So thick," Klaus murmured, and went about trying to swallow the whole thing. 


	9. Oh I See

Caroline came to with a slow opening of her eyes. There was blood in her mouth and two thousand year old vampires watching her, Elena laid out by her side, holding her hand tight. The absence of pain made her head spin, and she flexed her toes to feel no sharpness residing in her soles. Her ass was back to normal, and the few achy points in her body from falling down a flight of stairs were gone.

"Oh okay," she said. Things made a little more sense in her head. The evolution of it had been instinctive, therapeutic. At least Elijah had put up a little bit of a fight. She realized that she was turned on - again - and they would one hundred per cent be aware of it. "Elena. You okay?"

"Fine," she promised. "How are you?"

"Uhm. I need a shower."

"Cold?" Klaus quipped.

To spite her terrible mood, she smiled and even looked at him. For a split second, it was as it should've been, with him and Elijah and a nice flowing easiness between them all. But then she recalled most of her evening, and how he hadn't spoken to her in so long, and every other horrible thing that had happened to her in New Orleans. Plus! She'd put Elena in danger.

"Yeah," she said, her smile fading. "I'll-... I'll just be - I need my room and a shower and Elena's staying with me. Good night."

"Good night, Caroline. Elena," Elijah said, bowing his head.

"That's it?" Klaus said, taking her hand as she stood. "That's all you have to say?"

"What do you want me to say?" She yanked her hand out of his.

"I'm pretty sure," Elena said firmly. "This had been a huge night and us mere mortals need to sleep it off."

"Sod off," Klaus said sharply.

"Do not," Caroline warned, standing in front of her friend, lifting her chin at him.

"Caroline, you need to talk to me about this," he motioned between them. "About _us_." His hand moved in a circle, ticking off Elijah and himself both.

"Okay, you want me to talk about this right now?" She mocked his hand gesture furiously, feeling Elena's attention prickle on her neck like a crawling bug. "You two want to bone? Go ahead. You do your kinky shit and have fun with it. I don't care. Can I go to bed now?"

"I want you," Klaus demanded. "Elijah wants you. You're our perfect fit."

"Your_ perfect_-!?" she said shrilly. "You-! You are actually insane! You think I want to be involved in some - centuries old threesome? Oh my god. _No_. Why would you think that? Wai-wai-wait! Don't tell me. I don't want to know!"

"You're a liar," he pointed out flatly. "You didn't have a problem when he called you and invited me into your interlude. You chose me to come into the thick of it."

"That was a fantasy," she said firmly.

"Why not make it a reality?"

Caroline glowered at him.

"I'm not doing it," she said forcefully. "I'm not interested!"

"Liar," he said again, this time through his teeth. "I showed you that memory and despite whatever night you had tonight? You're _soaked_ with want."

"You're right," she said viciously. "I am turned on. I'd probably be turned on by a slight breeze, at this point, because guess who didn't get to finish earlier, because her supposed 'friend' decided to blindside her with casual incest and betrayal of her darkest secrets?!"

"I am sorry," Elijah offered.

"Besides!" she said, growing in volume, completely ignoring him. "Getting into a threesome with _you _would involve me having to _touch_ you at some stage, and you're lucky I can even _look_ at you right now."

He bared his teeth, eyes flashing for a moment.

"You're still angry about the landlord?"

"He was my_ friend!_" she shouted. It felt good. She squared up to him and gave his chest a hard shove. Huh. That felt... kinda good. "If anyone had ever tried to hurt _you_ the way you've hurt me, I would _kill them!_"

She thought about maybe pushing him again but couldn't quite summon the strength to do it. She'd already been in a life-or-death brawl that night and she was tired, man.

She caught it, the moment he saw her rage die, the hard lines of his face softening until he became so unlike himself she had to shut her eyes. A trap, because the tears that had been doing such a good job not spilling accidentally tripped over her lashes.

Her hands shot to cover her face and she pressed her fingertips into her eyes until she saw stars. The feel of his hand on her back made her sob. The slow moulding of his arms around her, scooping her tight under his chin, made her sob again. She turned her hands outward and dug her hands into his shirt, her eyes shut tight.

"I'm sorry," he said softly.

She believed he was sorry, but not for killing a man. For wounding her with the death. There was a part of her brain that was very convinced he wouldn't ever be sorry for it.

Until he kissed her cheek, she didn't stop crying. That small press of his scratchy mouth on her wet face made her stop with a sniffle. She could feel her tension ease out, smooth away into something less stressed. Her hands spider-crawled up to brace his neck, urging him in with gentle fingers to kiss her face again. It was addictive, that small attention. She sagged, and his hands framed her waist.

"You need to shower," he said into her ear.

"Uh huh." Her hands, behind his head, drifted up into his hair, sliding through the ringlets.

He pressed a soft kiss to her shoulder.

"I'll be... some where else," Elena said wisely.

"I'll show you to Caroline's room," Elijah suggested, opening his hand to the door.

When the door shut quietly behind them, Caroline breathed a sigh of relief. She found it hard to look at anyone presently. Only Klaus seemed to not hurt her brain at all.

"I want to make you feel better," Klaus said softly.

"How?" she asked on a breath.

"I want to wash you." He pressed his mouth to her collarbone, wrapping her back up in his arms to crush her in a big hug, kissing up the side of her throat. "May I take off your clothes?"

"It'd be hard to wash me with them on," she said, and only had to surge up onto her tiptoes for him to lift her, fixing her legs around his hips so he could blur them both to the bathroom connected to his bedroom. His fingers got between them and peeled the big coat away from her shoulders, the weight lifting off her made her feel somewhat saved.

When he set her down on the sink, she didn't immediately let him go. She had to keep her kisses short and to the point, because her nose was full of gross and she couldn't breathe through it properly. He allowed it, his warm palms rubbing the tops of her thighs, until she eventually sat back against the mirror and peeled her bra up and off.

His eyes fell to her chest, and he let out a small sigh, bending to pull a nipple into his mouth to suck on. Just the right amount of hurt, and the very barest threat of his teeth. She lifted her hips and tried to wriggle out of her jeans - he pulled them off with a loud rip.

"I liked those," she pouted.

"I'll buy you more," he promised warmly, hands skating up her thighs to rest on her hips. "Did they hurt you? Elena said they spoke of..."

"Getting me pregnant?" She shook her head. "He-... He kept ... touching me. In... He kept like... tasting his fingers."

"When I find him, love," he soothed. "I'll have his hands removed and sewn back on wrong."

"Maybe," she shrugged, and dragged him back in for a kiss. She kissed that terrifying scowl right off his face, peppering little pecks against his cheeks. Her hands, in his hair, lead him to her neck again, where he busied himself relearning her pulse.

"If you need me to stop..." he said.

"I don't want you to," she told the ceiling, her voice small. "I just want to know - when Elijah called? The first time and the second? You heard everything?"

"I was getting him off before you even texted," he confessed into the valley between her breasts.

Someone had mentioned it. It didn't matter to her then which one of them said it, only that it had been said.

"Were you just... sucking him off the entire time?"

"Well, I was rutting against the sheets," he mentioned off-handedly. "And there was a plug tonight."

"A plug?" She cracked an eye open.

"I was preparing," he said mildly, lifting his head to look her in the eye. "He does it too slow."

"Oh," she said, staring at his mouth. "He didn't... You two didn't... after I hung up?"

"No," he murmured. "We weren't in the mood by the time you were done with us. Last night, though, you put him in a mood, and it took him _hours_ to finally fuck me."

She hooked her thumbs in her panties and tried to take them off discreetly. It didn't happen. They were so wet they had become cold against her slit, and Klaus' eyes snapped to them at her eye twitch.

He opened his mouth, shut it, then put his fingers against the crotch of the cotton, and dragged them through the mess, lifting it up between them. It was fragrant, even to her. She wasn't sure how much it might smell to him, with all his senses.

"Stop," she said, embarrassed, and tried to knock his hand away.

"All this from a little domination over the phone?" he said, his brow twitching. "I haven't been serving you right, love."

"You serve me fine," she retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "Or you served me... or whatever."

There was a terrible pause between them. She shoved at his shoulder when he just continued to stare at her, and then popped down from the counter to go and turn on the shower. She tested the water on the inside of her arm, holding the edge of the door, when she felt him press up behind her, completely naked.

"Caroline," he said softly.

"What?"

"I would very much like to be with you," he said into her ear. Her body exploded into goosebumps when he tucked her hair behind her ear, and ran his nose along her neck.

"Right now?" she said.

"Right now," he confirmed. "Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. As long as you live."

"What does that mean?" she said, turning to face him. She snapped her fingers in front of his face at his half-lidded look. "_Hey_. Don't give me that hungry-wolf eyes thing. What does that mean?"

"I want to be with you," he said simply. "I want to buy you pretty things. I want to show you all the beautiful things in the world. I want you to call me and tell me about your day. I want you to be in my bed when I come home."

"Not standing over a hot stove slaving away?" She arched a brow. "I'm not here to be a mindless sex slave, and travelling is nice for people who don't have jobs."

"Are you still planning on going back to work after tonight?"

"Well, yeah..." she crossed her arms over her chest. "Maybe - not the same places, but yeah. I like working. I like being busy."

"I'll keep you plenty busy," he assured her. "With you by my side, Caroline, we'd rule the world."

"By your side?" she repeated. "Is that what you're calling this?"

"Calling what?"

"_This_." She motioned between them, landing a smack against his chest.

"This," he said, his voice low as he wrapped an arm around her to grab a handful of ass. She missed the soreness. "This is _us._ You can call it whatever you want."

"Boyfriend?" she tried. It didn't fit, but it was the only word she could conjure.

"Yes, I'll be your boyfriend." He rolled his eyes. "Does the label make you happy?"

"Yes," she said with no hesitation. "But - what about Elijah?"

He arched a brow.

"What _about_ Elijah?"

"We - you-... tonight was really weird," she finished meekly. "The thing yesterday? Weird. But I really need him to be my friend. He's important to me."

"So be his friend," he urged her, taking a step forward, causing her to step back. "He adores you, love. If you don't want it to progress, it won't. He'll only ever be what you want him to be. He's very sensible. I, on the other hand, _need_ you, and will not stop hounding you until I get what I want."

"What do you want?" she said, feeling the first spray of warm water on her back. She shut her eyes in rapture when it cascaded over her shoulder, spilling between them. Lucky for her, his clever hand was protecting the slick from her earlier arousal, a finger already curled up inside her.

She whimpered, dug nails into his back, and he smiled at her lazily.

"To make you feel for me the way I feel for you," he said against her mouth, and sucked on her lip.

This, like the first time they were together in the forest, was not kinky or playful. It was deep and desperate, where he was inside her so quickly she barely noticed the stretch until he was all the way in, bumping her uterus when her back hit the tiled wall and forcibly stopped his advance. She gasped against his shoulder and dug her knees into his hips, pulling herself up to drop back down, get him buried to the hilt in her soping wet cunt.

She swore, head tilting back into the wall, and felt his mouth on her throat.

"You made him kiss you, in that fantasy," he murmured against her skin. "So many kisses. Do I not pay you enough affection?"

She made a noise, made herself roll up and down on his cock. God it felt so good within her, filling the ache of her hungry void. The sensation made her toes curl and she shut her eyes, groaning loudly, when he topped out within her again.

"Do you want me to kiss you?" he said more urgently. "The way you wanted him to kiss you?"

"If you're going to be gross and jealous-" she started.

He grabbed her ass in both hands and started to drive into her her, making her bounce on every thrust of his hips. He captured her mouth with his and she clutched his shoulders, essentially just hanging on for the ride.

One of the things that crossed her mind, no matter how hard she tried to stay present in the reunion sex she was doing, was what Elijah would've done if he'd been there. If Klaus had been getting ready earlier that night, would Elijah fuck him now? Would he make Klaus get on his knees? Would he kiss her, and touch her like he said he would?

She opened her eyes and gasped for air, slowing the roll of her body onto him.

"Klaus," she said, and kissed his cheek, both his eyes and the tip of his nose. He shut his eyes and held her up, taking her away from the cold bite of the tiled wall to hold her in two capable arms. "Bed?"

"Bed," he repeated, and shut off the running water before blurring to deposit her on his covers. He kissed her thoroughly, and her blind hands went seeking for his hard length, giving it several quick pulls before she steered him into her and caught him inside with a gasp.

She pulled his head to her shoulder and let him drive into her for a while, the butting of his blunt cockhead on her insides made her punch out a breath on every pointed thrust. She pushed him onto his back and rolled with him to keep him seated in her, feeling the added - nearly unbearable - pressure of him nudging so deeply inside her.

She shut her eyes tight, bobbing a little, her thighs trembling as his hands found her hips and guided them. She reached to brace herself on his bare naked chest - thought of Elijah's, with the hair - and noticed that his nipples were a rosy pink color. She dragged her nails over them and her fucked up into her, drawing a yelp out of her throat.

In reply, she bent down and just lightly grazed one with her teeth. _Elijah's nipples are a dustier pink color _flitted through her head, and she opened her jaw wider to bite the meatier part of his pec, making him growl at her and wrap her up in his arms.

He nailed her fast and hard, just like that, kept nursed along himself like a small child. She clutched his shoulders and let him, kissing his throat, his cheek, tugging the lobe of his ear with her tongue.

"I wish I could see," she said. "The marks I would leave on you, if I could..."

"I wish I could've seen your arse," he confessed. "Made pink and sore by his hand."

She wasn't expecting the orgasm, but it rocketed up through her at the thought - of being spanked raw and red with Elijah standing behind her, and Klaus watching while he jacked it, a plug nestled in his ass, waiting his turn. Sweet merciful Christ.

The way her greedy cunt clamped down on him was like the first time she had come; it was much more intense than her usual fare, and she cried out, breathless, continuing to clench for at least a solid twenty seconds.

"Fuck," he said against her brow, looking down between them. His entire abdomen was wet with her release, and he rocked into her a little more slowly, feeling her still actively coming around his prick. He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but she interrupted with a breathless kiss.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said between kisses. "Just - don't stop - I can come again. Fuck me, Klaus. _Fuck_ me. Don't stop."

He pulled her into a kiss and did as she asked, rolling her onto her back, baring down on her with no mercy. He fucked her until she was several inches higher on the bed than where she started, and her poor uterus had been punched a number of times. She was going to be sore from this, and she couldn't wait to try and walk it off, knowing the delicious ache deep inside had been put there by a desperate Hybrid trying to fuck her through the mattress.

She came with just the slightest indication that he was growing close - he started to growl under his breath, his inner wolf clawing to the surface. She sobbed her release and arched her back, opening up her throat for the hot pull of his mouth.

"Bite," she said. "I need you - I want you to -"

He didn't need to be told twice. He sank his fangs into her jugular and took a deep draw of blood.

She had come too recently for a full one to take her again, but her walls gave a willful flutter around him. He tightened his arms around her and spilled inside. When she was tight from the clench of her hungry hole, she felt him shooting, felt the thick hot spill of it when he fucked her through it.

He stayed nestled up inside her, throbbing, and she squirmed to feel it leak from her swollen flesh.

He dragged a mostly uncooperative mouth over her throat to collect any of the blood that had been dribbled out without his permission, keeping himself held aloft from her on shaky forearms.

She thrusted up and made him crack a grin caked in red, licking his teeth under her curious eyes.

"That's sensitive," he told her.

"Yeah, mine too," she teased, and jerked against him again. He was too soft to hit her insides, but not soft enough that she didn't feel a delicious drag continuing to stimulate her. With a pleased hum, she humped again, and made him cringe, put his head down on her shoulder.

"You're cruel," he accused.

"You're not moving," she sing songed.

"That's because I love to be in you," he muttered. "Even when you're bent on dragging my soul out through my cock, apparently."

"You've had worse," she mused, and fucked against him again, his firm abdomen knocking her clit. She gasped sharply, jerking back, and saw the devious look in his eye as he lifted his heavy head. "No, no, don't you dare-"

"But Caroline, love," he cooed, and reached between them, getting a thumb on the nerve of her clit, giving it a quick side ways rub. "What kind of lover would I be, if I couldn't get you to come for me a third time?"

She made a lot of noise but it wasn't words. He stayed in her, and wasn't even fully flaccid when she next came, the orgasm drawn out of her with his insistent thumb swiping left to right.

She was still panting while he kissed her, sliding out of her wrecked opening, then leaned back to admire the handiwork. He touched some of the spill and she mewled, feeling how much come was pooled between her legs.

"That was great," she told him, reaching down to clamp around his wrist. "But please stop touching me now."

"You started this little sensitivity jousting," he mused, and swirled a pattern into the inside of her thigh. "What a fun little game to play."

"It's only fun for like, two seconds," she grumbled with no real heat. "And only when I'm winning."

"Aren't most things?" he drawled.

She lifted a drowsy head to see his fascination with the come as it dripped out, scooping it up with his fingers, knocking into a still tingling clit. She gasped, reached down with both hands, and clamped them around his wrist. (Which she knew was a joke, because if she was really going to flex against his super powers she would never win. But still. He _stopped_, and she felt the tantalizing rush of power flood her already dopey brain.)

"Good," she said, trying not to be too pleased. "You're making a mess."

"I'm making a-? Caroline." His eyebrows nearly hit his hairline as he lifted more properly onto one arm and wiped the heel of his hand through the spray that had been her release. "Look at what a mess you made of me!"

"Yeah, well..." she said uneasily, hot blood beginning to crawl up her neck. "It was good. Congratulations. I squirted. I didn't know I could."

He broke into a wide grin.

"You and I," he rumbled. "Have been away from each other too long."

She swallowed down the thing that she wanted to say, which was: _Well who's fault is that?_

He'd apologized for Rich. That's all she could get. She certainly couldn't get her friend back.

"Yeah," is what she said instead.

He managed to look up at her face to see the expression there - his own morphed into something a little more guilty in reply - he bent and pressed a tender kiss to her face before climbing off the bed.

"Do you want a proper shower now?"

She nodded, and lifted a hand at him.

"Carry me," she demanded playfully. "My legs aren't working."

"As the lady wishes," he cooed, dragging her by the ankle to the side of the bed.

* * *

When Klaus rolled over at 2:30 that morning, she knew he woke up by the immediate scrunch of his face.

"Sorry," she whispered, and cupped her hand around her phone to dull the light.

"What're you doing?" he mumbled, cracking open the barest slit in one eye to see her on her phone, tapping away at a To Do List. "How long've you been awake?"

"I'm going to sleep when this is done," she placated. "I just had some things I needed to get down before I forget."

"How long've you been awake?" he said again.

"I'll shut it off now," she bartered, and continued typing.

"Stop dodging my question," he growled.

"Well, being awake implies I've gone to sleep," she said smoothly, and scrolled through her list of things. "Which I haven't. But I will."

She just needed to make sure her tomorrow was planned, and then she would be able to sleep.

  * Wake up EARLY
  * Shower AGAIN
  * Breakfast w/ Elena (Elijah???)
  * Send in resignation(s)
  * Call police????
  * Ask Klaus about living arrangements
  * Organize clothes from apartment
  * Let apartment management know there was another breech in security
  * Get a gun
  * Elena to try gumbo (Mama Jerry's vs Gold's)
  * Locate cleaning instruments

"Ask Klaus about living arrangements?" he read, and settled more on her pillow than his.

"I don't want to live at my apartment, ever again," was her solid reply. "Even going to get all my stuff is a chore right now."

"I can have people do that for you."

"And see all my unmentionables? No. I'll do it. Besides - no one will pack my things right."

"I can go with you," he promised her.

"I'd like that," she agreed. Thoughtfully, she said: "I know you said you wanted to be with me, but I can't just ignore how we are, historically. I need to find another place. Somewhere secure."

"You're secure here."

"Yeah, right up until we next get into a fight and I storm out."

"So don't leave."

"Well maybe I won't if you don't fight me."

He considered this.

"Point. I'll set up a few meetings with my people."

"No," she said simply. "I need to find another job - oh, yeah, I need to..."

  * Find another job
  * Begin to house hunt

"Why can't I help you find a safe place to live?" he said, disappointed. "You don't need to have a place. You're safe here, with us."

That pesky little 'us' made her tense up.

"I one hundred per cent need somewhere else," she said defensively. "And it needs to be in my budget, not yours, so I'll scope out the real estate and _don't meddle_. So can I stay here for a while until I get another job? And then I'll leave."

"You don't need to leave," he said.

"Well I'm not going to stay here when we get into an argument."

"Leaving won't solve anything."

"It'll solve the instinct to punch you straight in your stupid face."

"You should just punch me," he shrugged. "I usually have it coming."

"No!" she was scandalized. "That's why I'll walk away! Violence isn't always the answer!"

"Neither does walking off with your knickers in a twist."

"It gives me time to cool down," she pointed out. "And think. You can't tell me that isn't a good thing."

"You over-think, and that is not a good thing."

"Nope," she popped the 'p' and stared at her list, swiping up and down slowly. She knew there were things she was forgetting. But her achy brain wasn't cooperating.

"Put down the phone," he said, voice rough. "Lay down. Shut your eyes. I'm right here."

She considered the phone for a moment, then plugged it into the charger and set it aside, laying on her back, the sheets pulled up to her breasts. She inhaled deeply, focused on the feel of herself being supported by the bed, and willed sleep to come.

Klaus scooted over to kiss her face, one lovely long peck at a time, starting from the corner of her eye and trailing to her mouth, where she turned her head and got a long smooch from him. He nudged her jaw with his nose to lift her face, and then sucked a soft kiss against the bite mark on her throat.

"There was a touch of fear in you," he murmured. "I can still taste it in your blood. In the back of my throat. Like vinegar."

"I'm not scared of _you_."

He hummed, like this wasn't news to him. He laid on his side, his naked body radiating heat so close to her, and put his hand around her waist.

"You can stay here," he reminded her quietly. "As long as you like. As long as you need. For what it's worth; I thought that by telling you I wanted to be with you meant day-to-day. That you'd want to be mine within these walls."

"I do, but we need a plan B," she told the roof, running her fingers over the coarse hair on his arm. "We can be kinda volatile, Klaus. I need to know I'll be okay if 'kinda volatile' ends up 'kinda about to kill each other'."

He let that sink between them, shifting a little closer, his chin going to her shoulder.

"I'll give you the money you need to buy a place," he told her. "If it makes you feel better, you can pay it off to me."

"Actually, that sounds really good-"

"In sexual favors."

She whacked his arm.

"What happened to violence doesn't solve everything?"

She leaned over and kissed where she'd hit him, then crawled down the bed, feeling his fingers slide through her hair as she began to work off her incoming debt.

She didn't go to sleep until the sun began to rise.


	10. Oh So Broken

Things changed after that.

First thing she had to deal with was the fact that she straight up killed Cheryl. The right amount of pressure against her temple and bam. Super dead.

Klaus seemed quietly very proud and it unnerved her. So she didn't talk about it.

The Mikealsons decided that it was considered an attack against them, that she was abducted, so the police were not involved. They put out names and faces amongst their people, and instructed that the remaining duo be brought in alive.

But Erin and Phillip disappeared, somehow; which given the extent of the man power out actively searching for them, was quite a feat.

So Caroline cleaned the compound to keep busy. Top to bottom, every nook and cranny - it took her all day just to be done with the office, so she at least made it last. She even polished the trinkets, and had the arduous journey of finding particular cleaning methods that wouldn't be abrasive on the expensive ancient objects, and accidentally uncovered a skeleton in one of the walls she scrubbed a little too hard.

There were_ fourteen bottles_ of _already open_ lube strewn in various drawers and behind plants. She didn't even have to dust most of them.

* * *

Sleep was a luxury that people who hadn't been broken into twice could afford. Keeping Klaus off her case meant a lot of under handed, under the belt techniques, and she had the impression that the novelty might be wearing off for him.

"We can take you anywhere you want," Klaus said to her in bed, his fingers leaving goosebumps in their wake as he drew nonsense designs on her shoulder.

_We_, was a thing he said too often. _We_, made her very, very quiet.

"It's fine," she said quickly. "I like it here."

"You haven't left the compound in nigh on a week, love," he said gently. "Shall I take you out for a night on the town? Show you off to the city that calls me King?"

"I'm usually pretty tired from cleaning," she said mildly, her eyes drifting shut.

"Well you aren't obligated to."

"I know. I just like it. And I need to be busy. So."

"What if we go earlier?" he suggested. "A matinee? Lunch? A gallery? Just you and I, and art and music. A quiet day to take your mind off of-"

"I have things to do here," she said clearly. "My days are full."

"I can hire people for the maid's work you call a hobby," he teased carefully. He kissed her shoulder, clever fingers reaching up to brush her hair back from his searching mouth. Two breathy kisses in, and she began to hum in approval, her tight shoulders loosening under a hot kiss. "Let me keep you busy, Caroline. Let me slay your demons."

"I don't have demons," she said primly.

"Prove it," he goaded her, trailing his fingers over her ribs, softly scratching around her belly. His possessive hand pulled open her thigh to hook it back over his own, and he dragged blunt nails on the sensitive skin of her inner leg. "Say you'll come with me."

"I might if you keep that hand going where it's going," she sighed, and opened her dry eyes to their room. She felt him brush against her curls, felt him stir a finger around her clit, and wanted, desperately, to continue. But she'd say anything if he got his way with her in those moments, when he was so bent on it. "But I have to go. Can I get a rain-check?"

"Go where?" he murmured, and cupped his hand over her mound. He pressed his mouth to her ear, nipping it with his teeth.

"I have things-" she gasped.

"What if I don't let you?" He slid slow fingers up into her, never breaching, only teasing. He traced the outer opening of her and she started to squirm into the attention. "What if I just... do... this?"

One finger dipped in and hooked into her, tapping the spot inside her that made her thighs clench. Even both clenching legs were no match for his talented hand, which quickly graduated to two knowing digits. The stretch after last night's interlude was welcomed easily, but there was a certain dry sharpness.

"Klaus," she said, and reached down to wrap both hands around his wrist.

"Yes, love?" he said, amused. "Will you come with me?"

"I-" she couldn't. She didn't want to leave. She didn't want to sleep. She just wanted to fuck him and clean the house. It shouldn't have been a problem. No one was getting hurt.

"Say you'll come," he urged. "And I'll make you come."

She opened her mouth to reply, to complain, or reject him, and decided to play as dirty as he was. If he thought he could make her brainless with sex, boy, had he not been paying attention.

"That depends," she said, soft and cool.

"Depends on?" he mused.

She reached behind herself and closed her hand over his velvety cock, already half full of morning interest. She edged herself backward, bowing forward to present her asshole, nursing the head to her opening.

"Can you make me come from here?" she challenged, and he just about lost his goddamn mind.

Crisis averted.

After he fell asleep, she hobbled around the compound with a bucket, scrubbing brush and disinfectant. She needed to start on the fountain, because that algae? No way. Not happening.

* * *

Elijah had been very polite though removed, and while she'd made a point to eat healthily, she did it outside of his realm of influence. She found herself squirmy and unsure in his singular presence, which meant that if Klaus was out doing - his devious King Hybrid shit - Caroline was trying to make herself _busy _elsewhere.

Which, come Saturday morning, amounted to more cleaning of an already pristine library. She'd already re-ordered the books by size (smallest to largest, obviously,) and then decided to do them again by ROY G BIV. Seeing as none of them were named, she had to make do with visual cues, and had them organised by red through to yellow-brown when one fell open on her lap.

Huh. It was just a regular old journal, this one written in English. It was a touch hard to read with the damage from time mixed in with the slanted hand and the ole traditional language barrier, but the stitching keeping the pages bound was something she was moderately interested in.

And seeing as the book were sorted by color around her in a circle, there wasn't much left to do but get her tools and begin to fix it. She was distracted by trying to read the ancient hand when there was a tap at the double doors.

"Forgive me," Elijah said mildly. "May I come in?"

She flinched, looking up at him with an open tome in the middle of her crossed legs.

"Uh! No! You're - you're good - come in. I was just -" She looked at the handwritten diary, then back to him, eyes huge and guilty. "I was just-! Fixing!"

He didn't seemed too phased.

"It's alright," he said smoothly, and strolled over to crouch down and unearth one of the sleeker green books - the one embossed with a subtle E.M on the top right corner. He put it under his arm and glanced at the book on her lap. "The 1300's were a particularly rough phase, for Niklaus and myself. Do forgive all the blood."

"I wasn't reading-!" she started, then shut her eyes to his arching brow. "I _was_. I'm sorry. I actually didn't mean to pry - I was fixing the stitching."

She showed him where she was carefully threading the new cotton into the previously made holes in the ancient pages, carefully going page by page to make sure it was done properly.

"You're very good at that," he said.

"I still should've asked," she realized. "Like, I know they're delicate and I've never worked on anything this old, before, but they're pretty simple in design so I just thought that- instead of them falling apart while I like, actively fix books for a hobby I should just _start_ and - I only started reading because I saw my name but I know I shouldn't have because it's your private thoughts, and I -"

"Caroline," he said patiently. "It's alright. If I didn't want you to read my journals I wouldn't have left them somewhere so open. Which Caroline did you read about?"

"There's more than one?"

He smiled softly at her. It was the first one she'd lingered long enough to see in days, and it made her heart squeeze for the time when they used to be so frequent between them.

"I've known a lot of Carolines," he said. "I've known too many Niks. Only one of them a Niklaus. Nicolous was far more popular. You can imagine how chuffed that makes my brother."

She could, and ducked her eyes to the book. It still made her... squick... that they were like - fucking. They hadn't since she moved in, (or that she knew of) and there was a part of her that felt kinda bad? Like. They were when she was gone. And curious. Mostly curious! They were so... not incest-y?

"Hey, so..." she said uneasily. _Run,_ said a voice in her head. _Run away before you say something stupid and insulting, and ruin this cool thing you have with him where you pretend he didn't at one stage have you ass up over his knee_. "Are you two... like? Still...?" She waved her hand in a short loop.

"Are my brother and I still... having interludes?" he guessed. At her nod, he shrugged. "It's rather an unspoken rule that we don't engage when there are other people in our home."

"Why?"

"Because it's confronting," he said easily. "It's often our siblings who have to listen and inadvertently bare witness. They tolerate us in privacy. They will not be as respectful if they're made to hear."

"So the others never-?" That was private, she scolded herself. "Sorry. You don't have to tell me."

"It's just Niklaus and I," he confirmed.

"Oh okay," she said, fiddling with the fine needle. The book was his diary, so it didn't have page numbers, but she committed that page to memory to read it later, and pressed the point through the hole to turn the page and carefully pull the thread through, securing it in the spine. It was easier to talk to him when she had an excuse not to look at him. "I'm just saying. I don't have super hearing."

"What does that mean?" he said, a touch too quickly.

"Like..." _Shut up Caroline. Shut up Caroline. Just shut up, Caroline_. "If you two were - you know. Gonna-... _You know._ You could. I don't - I don't hate it, or hate you, or whatever, I just-... It was a bit of a, uh - shock, and I didn't want - I don't want to be a part of it."

"We don't spend all our waking hours playing with each other," he informed her quietly. "We'd never get anything done, otherwise."

"He-" She swallowed. "Sometimes... I think he might miss you. That way."

"He might," he said with a shrug. "But he prefers you."

She wasn't sure why, but that, coming from him? Made her ears turn pink.

"Yeah, well," she said awkwardly. "If you two wanted to - be together. Sometimes. That's all I'm saying. I wouldn't mind."

_WHAT THE FUCK AM I SAYING? _shrieked across her mind but she didn't stop to correct herself.

"Wouldn't you?"

"No. You two-... It's complicated, okay. I know. He showed me. And you two - you're my best friends, and you make me happy, and you make each other happy, and since you and I-" the thought tripped over her tongue. She hastened to correct that sentence so that she didn't have to admit to him what he already knew. "You two don't talk, you don't even argue, and I just - I just thought - well, I'm thinking that if you two need to-?"

"We're not currently enemies," he told her softly. "You haven't come between us, Caroline. Our indifference isn't based on cold shoulders. We're worried about you."

"Oh! Right! Well! Don't do that. So, if you want - let's just make it simple, and say that it makes you happy. If that's what makes you happy, then you should keep doing it. I'm only twenty three, Elijah, what do I know about- your business? It's not hurting any body. Well-" She glanced up at him, feeling blood in her cheeks, a cheeky half grin ghosting her mouth. "Maybe if you do it right, it'll hurt."

He smiled at her with fond glitter in his eyes. It made her heart back flip.

She looked at the book.

"You wouldn't mind being jealous?"

"I wouldn't be jealous," she said quickly, threading the needle through the paper. "It's my idea. If I was gonna be jealous I wouldn't have said anything."

"You wouldn't mind him being tired?"

"He's wearing me out," she announced. "Help would be appreciated."

"He does have a high drive. And I can do that," he said evenly. "Help take off some of his edge. He can - sometimes, our interludes, you understand, can be slightly over whelming. He can be quite... moody, after. You would need to take care."

"I can," she replied with certainty. She knew the special kind of fragility that came with submission. She had seen Klaus' memories - she'd seen where he could go. She wanted to see more, and the idea of it made a delicious shiver creep down her spine.

"Would you tell me if you regretted this?" he asked calmly.

"Yeah," she said, and swallowed. "Yes, I would."

He narrowed his eyes at her, studious.

"I would," she stressed. "Hey. He's important to me. You're important to me. Can we not-...? Like. This is a weird situation. But don't complicate it. I'm not. So are you in, or what?"

* * *

"Aaaand that is how I argued that my boyfriend was gonna casually fuck his brother sometimes," she whispered into the mic.

"...Damn," Bonnie said.

"I had heard they go hard at each other," Enzo said into her earpiece.

"Are you okay with this?" Elena's husky voice said. She had been quiet the entire conversation. No one had gotten out of her how her trip back home had gone, and no one was game to push too aggressively. "You hate sharing."

"It's..." She searched for a word.

"Complicated," Bonnie said.

"I don't mind. It's almost like it doesn't count, somehow. And he is _actually _wearing me out. I didn't even know I could squirt until this last week. Now _he_ knows and he's_ obsessed_ with dragging it out of me." She did not mention that hearing him talk about his brother was the only known sure-fire way to make it happen. Caroline scrubbed the floor a little harder. "I'm wasting away, over here."

"Are you eating?" Elena asked, half before she'd finished speaking.

"Yeah," she was. Not with Elijah. But if there was food in the fridge, she ate it. Sometimes she skipped lunch. So what?! It wasn't a problem. She was still eating! "Yeah, I'm okay. I'm healthy. I've got it under control. Trust me."

"Photos," Bonnie declared. "With a newspaper. And I will. Did you get the charms I sent?"

"Well they got sent to my apartment, and I am beyond not ready to venture back there. So when I get them, I'll text you, okay?"

"Okay," Bonnie said.

"You should fuck the both of them," Enzo said. There was a loud smack, and a British '_ow!_' "Don't they align to your tastes? Doesn't the elder one take on the role of Daddy and Klaus is the willful little brat you wish you were?"

"Oh my god," Caroline said, mock brightly. "Wow. Hi Enzo, the best friend I never knew I was divulging literally my darkest fantasies to. Nothing is sacred any more, Bonnie?"

"It came up," the witch defended quickly. "Why this is more complicated for you than just - incest and a hybrid."

"Incest and a Hybrid," Elena said with humor. "Name of your sex tape."

Enzo chortled.

"It's also -"

"Don't say daddy issues," Caroline warned. "I mean it. No daddy issues. I don't have issues with my daddy. I'm not a freak."

"No one's saying you're a freak," Elena gentled her already soft tone. "We don't care."

"And taboo is precisely why you should fuck them both," Enzo said. "Go on love. If not for the thrill of two pairs of hands and mouthes on your body, why not just to watch in live what you've already seen in memories? To taste and to experience a thousand years worth of unadulterated fucking?"

"I'm not," she said, scrubbing harder. "Fucking them both at the same time."

"Why not?" Enzo cooed.

"Because," she said, and stopped scrubbing to catch her breath. "It's - complicated!"

"Nothing complicated about sex until after the sex stops," Bonnie amended on Caroline's behalf. "They're both important to her. Sex - even if it was sex, without the Daddy role play and the incest? That'd make everything she's working so hard to protect all go away. Disappear. And she doesn't need that, especially right now. Elijah is a good friend, and Klaus is... Important, somehow."

"Or he's the stepping stone to a triad," Enzo pointed out. "A full threesome relationship."

"It won't work," Elena said quietly.

"Why not?" Enzo scoffed. "It can and has. I've never done it myself, but if the stars align, why not? Do you three not already live together?"

"We do..." Caroline said softly.

"Haven't you all proven to each other to be the very best of mates?" he went on. At her silence, he kept going. "Haven't you said that Elijah calms you down from brawling? Haven't you said that Klaus serves you in a different way than Elijah? You're all compatible in pairs. It doesn't have to be secular. Nothing wrong with sharing."

"Favourites," was all the defense her mouth could make.

She blew a strand of hair out of her face, which immediately flopped into her eyes again. She started to scrub, scritch-scritch-scritch, and tried to use her shoulder to get the hair off her upper lip.

"They'll always be brothers," Enzo said casually, then much more cheekily: "Or your daddy and your brother, if you play your cards right."

"If you bring up the daddy thing one more time," she said, glaring into nothing as she scrubbed with her harsh bristled brush. "I'm never talking to you again. And Klaus is - it's not - he's not my brother, don't be_ weird_."

"He isn't _your_ brother, no," he said, amused.

"Okay," Bonnie huffed. "Out. Get out."

"Oh, what's a little ribbing between us girls?" he cooed.

Bonnie started to mutter in magic, and Enzo's voice stopped happening.

Once it was quiet between them, and Bonnie had apologized, Caroline sat up on her knees.

"Wait," she said, panicked. "Was he right?"

"About...?" Elena said slowly.

"Klaus," she said quickly. "Is that - is my fantasy that Klaus is my-?"

"Klaus is your boyfriend," Bonnie soothed. "In the bedroom, he's anything you want him to be, and there's no judgement here."

"But-!" her voice jumped several pitches. "Is that! The new kink?!"

"Does it feel like one?" Elena said, and Caroline's brain kind of... rebooted.

"Why am I so fucking broken?" she said tearfully, and ripped her ear phone out before they could protest. She ripped a glove up to hurriedly hang up the phone, then rejected every one of the calls that came in. From the look of the texts, she was going to have to do some deep soul searching before she ever read one. She wiped her face on her arm and then hid into the crook of her elbow to muffle the panicky breathing that swept up in her chest.

It was just!

Too many things!

To process!

Her brain was non-stop shrieking to consider, but the more she thought about it, the more it fit. A jarring jig-saw piece that fell into place in the twisted part of her that liked the idea of taboo; Klaus was the stubborn brother she wished she could be, taking the actual hard punishments when she chickened out and said her safe words.

She left her cleaning things and snatched her phone, darting into the nearest bathroom to run a shower and try and hide the sobbing. It felt wrong but, oh, didn't it sound so right?

Not the word _brother_, necessarily, but didn't she want to see it?

See him?

Bent over a bed again?

Defiant and bold?

Still so fucking ballsy, when Elijah was hurting him - like really, really hurting him?

Didn't she kind of want to worship his nerve?

The way he controlled in his submission?

Fuck.

_Fuck._

She was so fucking broken.

* * *

That night, sleep completely evaded her, even after Klaus had made her squirt for him.

She had been thinking about Elijah's hands.


	11. Oh So Hot

The next night, she was playing some word game on her iPhone when Klaus came into their bedroom limping. He was shirtless, his mouth swollen, and shoulders down. He didn't even look at her, just shut the door behind him and padded into the bathroom.

He left that open, so she saw the reflection of him trying to take off his joggers. She watched him struggle with the first elastic waist, pulling it out and over his backside, and tingles rushed through every nerve in her body.

She mindlessly dropped the phone on the bedside table and went to him, touching his shoulder.

"What happened?" she whispered.

"Over the knee," he murmured. He was so quiet. So subdued. There was something so fundamentally changed about him. "Hurts."

"Was it bad?" He shook his head. "Can I help?"

He grunted and she took it as the affirmative kind. She pulled out the waist of his boxers and carefully peeled it away from his red skin, marveling at the swelling. It looked painful in a nearly scary way, almost like welting. Nothing at all like hers, which was red for like an hour and then faded.

Her idiot fingers brushed the soft edge where his ass ended and thigh began, and he doubled over, clutching the sink.

"Sorry," she said, mesmerized.

"Hurts," he said again.

She made his feet navigate out of his clothes and while she was on her knees beside him couldn't help but smell the sex lingering in his ass - there was a drying pool of come between his legs that Caroline was, perhaps fortunately, very familiar with.

Elijah had come in him, and let it leak out. Holy _shit_. Oh boy. _Oh, boy_.

She stood up next to him and touched a tense shoulder, rubbing into the muscle. When he didn't respond, not even a little bit, she stood closer next to him and pressed a kiss on his bicep, curling her fingers around his arm.

"Will a shower hurt?" she whispered.

He grunted. Yes.

"Okay..." she flicked her eyes down at the mess between his legs. She'd never seen his dick when it wasn't some version of hard, and now saw that it was covered in drying come, too. Holy shit, she wanted to know how that had happened. "I'm... I'll be gentle. You're not getting into bed like this. I'm going to get you clean."

He bowed his head, and she kissed his arm again, going to get a washcloth out of their draw. She wet it with some soap, watching his reflection in the mirror, but he didn't move.

Slowly, she brought it up between his thighs, which parted for her to wipe him clean. She stayed on her knees with that wet cloth, tending him, very careful never to so much as threaten the sore skin on his ass. But by the time she was done, anyway, it had gone down a little, and was red but not alarmingly so.

Klaus had shut his eyes and widened his stance to let her into the various parts of him, and blinked them open lazily when she took his arm, leading him to the bed.

He knelt on it before sliding down belly first.

Caroline climbed in next to him, eyes half lidded on the round rise of a red ass just beside her.

"Is this still alright?" he muttered.

"Huh?" distracted, she made herself look up at him. He was frowning, which wasn't good.

"Is this still alright?" he said again. "Do you hate me?"

"What? No." She cuddled up to his side, rubbing her head against his arm. "You're my boyfriend. I kind of have to stick around for a while, right?"

"Boyfriend," he scoffed, but it was fond. "As though you signed up for this when you asked me to put a label on it."

"I signed up for you," she pointed out. "You were always going to be a little bit different."

"That doesn't mean occasional beatings and fuckings by my brother in the other room," he drawled.

She licked her lips.

"Yeah, well," she murmured. "It was my idea. I want you to be happy."

"I feel it. Happy. I feel happy seeing you now," he said drowsily. "I wasn't sure I would. I... I get-..."

"I know," she soothed, and kissed his cheek, which was salty with sweat. She did know, very well, that overwhelming embarrassment, that queasy yes-but-no-but-yes feeling that came with this twisty thing. "I do too."

He shut his eyes and let her press soft kisses all over his proud face, let her tease his ear with a playful lick and kiss over his shoulder.

She couldn't get her eyes off how red he was. She wanted to touch it, and her hand on his back kept on rubbing lower and lower like a bizarre game of chicken. It looked so hot. It would sting so bad. She wondered what Elijah had punished him for.

"He said I have been neglecting you," he murmured.

She hadn't realized she'd spoken.

"What?"

"He said I was going over his knee for neglecting you," he said again. "He said you aren't happy here and you're trying too hard to be in control. That you were damaging yourself in that control. Are you going to keep rubbing my back like that?"

Her hand had stilled on his spine and her heart had clenched - Elijah had told him about her eating habit? - but she resumed stroking, feeling how languid he was under the attention, like a big cat.

It wasn't for Elijah to out her eating disorder in their stupid little fuck-game.

Rage filled her ribs.

Why was it always so painful when she was betrayed by him? Why did she expect any better? He was Klaus' older brother, for gods' sake. That behavior was learned from somewhere, right?

She kissed his arm again and dragged her hand from the very top of his nape over the dip in his spine, right up to the ride of his tailbone. His hips lifted like he expected she would continue down, but she just swooped into the small of his back and rubbed up to his shoulders again.

"So he hit you," she whispered. "Then what did he do?"

"He pinned me down on the bed, face first," he muttered. "By the scruff of my neck. I was told under no uncertain terms was I allowed to move."

"So you moved," she said knowingly. He cracked a grin and it was so naughty she licked her lips just to skim over his and taste it. "What did he do then?"

"I was punished." 

"The kind where it sounds really good until it's happening?" she guessed.

"A specialty. He licked me open-" he stopped, then groaned. "I could feel... the spittle. Sliding between my legs..."

"Got you nice and wet?" she said softly. "Got you dripping?"

She heard his gulp.

"Yes."

"What happened then?"

"He used a toy to stretch me out," he muttered. "He's so fucking thick. If he's going to use his fingers he needs so much time. I thought he would make me wait - but he massaged my fucking prostate. And then he stopped, just as I was about to come. He did that to me five times, and never once touched my prick."

"Mean," she whispered. "He's so mean to you."

"I know," he lamented and chuckled, bowing his mouth to kiss the top of her nose. "And then he fucked me. So slow. It wasn't enough to make me come. Not nearly enough. He told me not to move, and not to beg. He warned me, but still... I did both."

"Naturally," she breathed. "What did he do to you? For being disobedient?"

"He fucked me like I asked him to," he murmured. "Kept hitting my bare arse with his fucking bony hips. And when I came without permission, he tried to wring another out of me. Agony and rapture never knew a too-sensitive cock being milked by a more talented hand."

Caroline winced. She stroked down his back and lifted her head a little to very very lightly trace the boarder of skin between the red and the white.

"It still looks so sore..."

"It is," he grunted, but his hips were lifting into her fingers.

She trailed them around to the side, then slowly followed the clear imprint of a hand. All five fingers emblazoned in his flesh, and she felt the line of it with her heart beginning to pound.

"Oh, Klaus," she murmured, absolutely unable to take her eyes off him. "It's so hot."

"Stings," he said into the pillow.

"I'm sorry," she said, and she was, but the urge to touch lingered in her hand. She scooted closer to him to be closer to it, her hand drifting just above the skin in a slow wave. "Oh my god, it's so hot... It's burning. Wouldn't a shower help?"

"Aloe would help," he said sheepishly.

"I have some!" She launched off the bed and scrambled in the bathroom counter, unearthing the gelatinous goop that she used on occasional sun burns and hot iron welts.

It made sense that it would serve to draw out some of that horrible heat in him, and she read the instructions on the back of the bottle as she crawled on the bed and made herself comfortable on the backs of his knees.

"Just a touch excited?" he drawled.

"Hey, the last time I got hit like this I had been chased by an actual ram on a farm," she said.

"A ram?" he mused. "Why were you on a farm?"

"Some field trip," she recalled, and spilt the clear goo onto her palm at his chortle. "Okay, so I'm gonna rub it on. I'll be careful."

"If you don't, perhaps I'll put you over my knee," he taunted.

"You can't even sit properly," she scoffed.

"I can bend you over this bed," he pointed out.

"You'd have to catch me first," she teased.

He had opened his mouth to speak but sucked in a hard breath, his taut shoulders pulling in as she applied the cream to his skin. She saw his fingers dig into the blankets and felt his lean calves go tight beneath her.

Gentle couldn't begin to cover it - she didn't even touch him, not really. She smeared the gel over the sorest points the most thickly, seeing the pattern of Elijah's heavy hand. He must've swapped palms at some stage to print them the way he had. She considered that he must've also had sore hands, if Klaus was marked up that badly.

"So this...?" she said quietly. "This wasn't, like, as hard as he can go?"

"No," he grumped. "He's done worse. This wasn't a real punishment, not like the one you saw. This was just playing, really."

"Hmmm." God, it was red. She could see bruises underneath, mottling and fading just as fast before her eyes. "Does it feel any better?"

He made an affirmative noise into the pillow.

Caroline decided to scoot up a little on his legs, pinning him under her ass, rubbing the remaining gel on her hands up the small of his back. She wasn't shy there because he wasn't hurt; she focused on eliminating some of that tension from the planes of his body. She stayed like that for a while, eyes occasionally flicking down to watch the skin of his ass begin to cool as she rubbed his back and felt him melting into the bed.

It wasn't long before he was breathing in long and deep, almost lulled to sleep by her touch.

When she felt he was relaxed enough, she crawled off his thighs and laid out next to him on the bed, her aloe covered fingers ghosting over the bridge of his nose and lips.

He kissed her fingers but didn't open his eyes.

"Have you ever dropped?" he murmured.

"What do you mean?"

"Dropped. When someone dominates you." He cracked open an eye. "When they make you feel so small, or useless, or angry, or frightened... and you shatter. Has anyone ever dropped you?"

She thought about it. The term wasn't entirely unfamiliar to her - she trolled a few message boards in her day - but now that she thought about it, maybe she'd experienced it. She touched the shell of his ear and cuddled in closer to his side, lifting his arm to wind it around herself like a heavy blanket.

"Yeah," she said, and tucked her face under his chin. His fingers absently toyed with her hair and she rubbed a small circle onto his back, her other arm folded under herself. She still didn't feel close enough to him. "Is that what this is?"

"I don't drop any more," he told her. "I used to. But we learned what to do to avoid the worst of it."

"You came in here so quiet..." she said.

"That wasn't a drop. I wasn't sure how you'd react," he confessed. "I don't think I could've imagined a better reception, honestly. Although you are just a touch infatuated by my red arse, and I didn't account for that."

She giggled guiltily and clutched his back.

"Is it wrong?" she wanted to know. "That I kinda like the look of it?"

"No," he said. "Remember, I wanted to see yours, too."

"Didn't you see the photo?" she asked, voice small.

She felt the way his body reacted, rippling with surprise.

"There's a photo?" he said slowly.

"There's... yeah. It's a short video, actually..."

"A video?" He lifted his head. "You've never sent me any such videos!"

"You've never tried to dominate me through the phone," she pointed out.

"If I did, would I get one?"

"If you tried, I'd probably send the screenshots to Elena and Bonnie." She tried to play it off as though sexting was just a thing that she did, but honestly, she'd only ever done it properly with Elijah.

"If I got a video out of it, I wouldn't care if you sent the evidence to the bloody Queen," he said boldly. "She'd probably get a kick out of knowing my more savory vocabulary, the saucy wench. Why did Elijah get a video? Did he ask for it? Or did you send it?"

"I was maybe..." she swallowed. "Hurrying along the process..."

"Do you still have it?" He said, lifting his arm. He rolled up onto his side carefully, unearthing her from hiding where he couldn't see her face. "Can I see?"

"What? No!" She rolled onto her back.

"You don't have them anymore?" he pressed.

"That's not what I said."

"So show me."

"No," she stressed, and wet her lips nervously, before getting up off the bed. "I'm gonna make some tea, do you want some?"

"You got to see mine," he protested.

"No." She walked across the room only to be barred by him, completely naked, licking his lips. "Oh, again with the hungry wolf-eyes. Listen. It's - it's not just - you know. It's a little bit more than... I don't want to show you."

"I've been nose deep in you," he said flatly. "I've seen you spray. Nothing you've taken a photo of can be any more than that."

"Yeah, but this isn't that," she said, feeling annoyance begin to tick down in the back of her head, the fuse on her patience remarkably short. "It's not just a red ass, Klaus-"

"What else is it?" His eyes were wide and mad. "Were you playing the role of his good little girl?"

She felt heat flood her cheeks, and tried to step around him. He blocked her, so she side-stepped him.

"You did," he accused. She stepped around him and made harassed noise when he moved in front of her again. "You played that little game you like to play, when you call him _daddy_-"

"_Hey_," she said sharply. "I don't make fun of you-"

"I'm not making fun," he amended quickly. "I'm not. But you know that you are not the same as she, don't you? That's why you're embarrassed. Because that persona you keep private from me, she's much more bold than you, isn't she? That _good girl_ Elijah murmured to, when his cock was pounding at the back of my throat..." he took a step forward, and she didn't, which bumped his chest against hers.

"I'm not showing-" she declared, cut off by his low purr.

"When he had my hair in his hands and had to keep pulling me off so he didn't blow early," he went on, searching her eyes. "Those photos - that video - he made me stop touching him entirely to keep his composure. _His good little girl_. She's a performer, is she?"

Tingles covered her entire body and she was pink in the face, she knew. But her hands were in fists and she was glaring upward into his face, her mouth in a tight frown.

"Klaus, you're hurting my feelings," she said quietly. "You weren't supposed to know any of that."

His smirk fell. He seemed to remember that she had been betrayed to be privy to any of that information, and lowered his eyes to the floor, getting out of her way.

"Are you coming back to bed?" he asked her as she walked out.

She just kept walking.

By that point, she and the compound were pretty familiar to each other. She made a cup of tea and took it up to the office, looking out into the city street with it nursed between her hands. She wished, absently, that she had've thought to grab her phone on the way out.

Honestly she should've been expecting an intervention.

"You should be angry," Elijah said simply, leaning his elbow down on the banister.

She already was. But the fact that he was trying to be all high and mighty about it didn't help. Not only had he exposed her kink without permission, he'd exposed her eating disorder. She stared resolutely ahead and drank a mouthful.

He watched her for a little while, then turned his attention to the city.

"I am sorry," he told her again. She knew. He'd already apologized. "That I shared our tryst. I never meant for you to be hurt by it."

"You never meant for me to find out."

"No," he agreed. "I did not."

She grit her teeth, and forcibly unclenched them to try and calm down.

"You think because you spanked me once, you get to decide what I do and don't do?" she said darkly.

"What?" he frowned.

"You think," she shook with a swell of rage. "That because I let you have an inch of control, that you can just, tell people things, about me? Try to control me always?"

"What are you pertaining to?"

"What I do to keep control over my life is none of your fucking business," she snapped, whirling on him. She was so, so angry. She felt nothing but shame and rage and betrayal, and made sure he knew it in the tone of her voice. "I have been through _hell_ in the last few months. How dare you tell Klaus he's not looking after me?!"

"Caroline-"

"No, not_ Caroline_!" she seethed. "I can't believe you would tell him - you promised you wouldn't tell him!"

"I-"

"And me, the idiot, believed you!" She wanted to seriously strangle him for a second. She set down the cup and it slipped straight off the edge and onto the ground by her bare feet, blowing out into sharp shards. She didn't even flinch, she was so mad. "Why did I think you could be trusted with that?! You told him-"

"I didn't tell him-"

"You told him I was damaging myself with my control!"

"You are," he said firmly. "By locking yourself in this house and not leaving. You're not _living _here. You're _hiding_. I didn't tell him off about _anything else_."

She stopped.

Thought.

At no point did Klaus say anything about _eating_.

Slowly, she realized that now he would definitely badger her about it, because there was no way she was shouting at Elijah and he wasn't listening. She shut her eyes and rubbed her skull, the throb of a background headache reminding her that it was still persistently hanging around.

She bent and picked up the worst of the mess of her broken cup, using the hard shell to scoop the shards inside. He bent to help her and she actually glared at him in warning. She could fix her own messes, thank you very much.

When he insisted on helping her, she stood with the worst of it and took a step over the broken pieces, dumping the mess in the bin on her way past.

"Caroline." His tone was firm enough that she halted for a full second before continuing to stride off. "Caroline,_ stop_."

"You can't make me," she muttered.

"We are going to talk about this," he said, falling into stride beside her. "You've been done a horrible disservice and it's my fault your trust is damaged. I know our friendship is in need of repair and so I'm asking you: what can I do to fix it?"

"Go the fuck away?" she suggested primly, and took a hard turn to get away from him, only to find Klaus there, dressed only in soft track pants, the kind that fell loosely from the hip. She threw up her hands with a groan of frustration at the roof and he cocked his brows at her, clearly not ready for the attitude.

"What did you not tell me?" he prompted, flicking eyes at Elijah.

"It doesn't matter," she said angrily. "I'm working on it."

"Substituting one vice with cleaning is not a life," Elijah said firmly. "You can't live here, scared forever."

"She's not scared," Klaus insisted. "She's with us. What can she be scared of?"

"Do not let your rose colored lenses fool you, Niklaus," Elijah said with real disdain in his voice. "This girl is not happy -"

"This girl has a name!" she said loudly. "And I am coping as best as I can!"

"You aren't coping," he said flatly. "You're ignoring the problem."

"So you think that I can't wait until my stalker and his psycho girlfriend are put away somewhere before I feel comfortable outside of the compound!?" she asked shrilly. "That isn't fair. I'm a human. I bleed when I'm cut and I have every right to be scared of what's out there, when I know it's after me!"

Klaus reached out to her but she dodged it sharply, yanking her arm away before he could land contact.

"You're safe with-"

"DO _NOT_-" She poked him hard in the chest. "SAY _US_!"

He lowered his head at her like a bull about to charge.

"Caroline-" Elijah started.

"STOP SAYING MY NAME." She clutched her head, and shut her eyes. Her shoulders were up around her ears and there was tightness in her chest. She was so fucked. Holy shit. Her breathing was hoarse and she felt tears prickling at her eyelashes. She batted them open and tried to weave around Klaus but he caught her by both arms and put her back to a wall. "_Don't fucking touch me_!"

Klaus bared his teeth at her, a feral growl rolling out of his throat. She tried to knee him in the balls and he knocked the attack aside to insert himself right up against her, his hips pinning hers.

Elijah's hand was on his shoulder and it went unheeded. The Hybrid growled in warning and Caroline dug her nails into his wrists to try and pry him off of her.

"LET ME GO," she shouted.

"Klaus," Elijah warned. "That's enough."

"Is this the part where you walk out?" he said darkly. "Go to that place you swore you would get, weeks ago? Is this the part where you leave the compound in a fit? Go on then. Do it."

He let her go.

She shoved him hard in the chest and he took a step back, showing her his hands.

He seemed to mock her with the upturn of his lip. She shoved him again, squaring off at him toe-to-toe.

"Stop it," Elijah said flatly. "If you're going to go, then go. No one will stop you."

He knew full fucking well she wouldn't. She was seething inside, absolutely acidic in her rage, when she turned from them both and marched herself to her room.

Well. All the important things were in their room, but she at least had a change of panties and Elijah's gifted shirt in there. And what else could she do but take a cool bath piled high with bubbles?

If she were a potato, it would've been a really sour stew, and pruned was a very mild description for what her fingers and feet looked like when she eventually climbed out of the tub.

The shirt still smelt of Elijah's personal fragrance and she was still so fricken mad, but god it was lovely. She tucked herself into the forgotten bed, missing the feel of Klaus only an arm length away.

Although she was tired, and although she craved the sweet oblivion in dreams, sleep mistreated her terribly.

Honestly?

It had been a long time coming.


	12. Oh, A Sexy Intervention?

The dream was already gone from her brain before she really woke up, but the scratches on her face were stinging from her tears to remind her that it had happened.

The first thing she said was:

"Wait, wait, _wait_ -!"

And then realized that she had one hand trapped by an Original apiece. She fought to regain control from her wobbly thighs and blurry vision, taking in Klaus on the bed beside her with a knee weighing down her leg, and Elijah sitting by her on the corner of it, his free hand on her calf to stop it from swinging.

She heaved for breath and relaxed her neck onto the pillow, averting her eyes to the ceiling.

"Are you with us?" Klaus fretted, stroking her hair away from her wet face.

She gulped.

"Yeah," she exhaled. "Yeah. I'm with you. Can you get off me now?"

Elijah let her hand and leg go before she was finished. Klaus took his knee off her leg and threaded their fingers together, bringing her hand to his chest, where she felt his strong heart pounding away beneath the sinew.

He bent his head to it and she covered her eyes as fresh tears started to well up, wiping quickly. She flinched at the sharp sting of salt in a new wound and looked at her fingers to see diluted blood. Ah.

Carefully, she extracted her hand from him and drew up her legs to her chest, hugging them while she pressed her fingers to her face and felt for the damage on her cheeks. Under her right eye was pretty bloody. It was probably the worst. The left eye hadn't escaped unscathed but it wasn't bleeding as much. She caught sight of the sleeve and saw it was already spotted with the blood that marred her hands.

"Shit," she muttered, rubbing her thumb over it, then looking at that stupid thumb which had only smeared the blood. "Hey do we have lemons? Sorry, Elijah, I can get it out. Shit, shit, I'm so sorry. Sorry."

"You're worried..." he said slowly. "That I can't... get blood out of a shirt?"

She processed that. Laughed weakly. Even managed to meet his eye for a whole second.

"Yeah, that's dumb," she said. "Sorry."

"Above your well-being?" He eyes narrowed in thought at her, and his tone changed. "You're telling me that you think I would be more concerned with a state of my shirt? Over you?"

"Ah," Klaus muttered. He inched back on the bed.

She frowned at him slightly, confused.

"You think-?" Elijah went on. "That I would bat an eye at the blood you spilt? And not at the reason it was spilt?"

"Like-" She held it up between them. "I can get it out."

"Right," Elijah said softly. It was... dangerous. He hadn't blinked in like, a really long time.

"It's fine," she said. "Why are you looking at me like that? I said I could get it out."

"Now you've done it," Klaus warned her, a split second before she was hauled over Elijah's shoulder, his arm clamped over the backs of her knees.

"_Hey_-!" she said, head spinning at the quick shift of events. She saw his bare feet and dark sleep pants, and the floor moving as he strode them out of her room. Her legs were bare from the panty line down, and the night air made its business floating up the hem of her shirt. She struggled up, using the small of his back to rise, seeing Klaus following along.

He shrugged.

"What did I do?" she asked him, bewildered, trying to shove the shirt down behind her.

"Whatever instinct is in him to look after you," he said, a touch too coolly. "That same instinct that compels him to look after me-"

"But what did I _do_?" she repeated desperately, reaching back to tug the shirt over her ass, at least. His grip was impossible and the material had no give in it. She twisted to try and see his face but couldn't from her angle. She made an unflattering distressed noise and tried to wriggle out of his clamped arm, but he didn't even pretend like it was affecting him.

She was sat down hard enough to bounce on the bed, her legs kind of going wherever they wanted before snapping shut under two pairs of watching eyes. She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what she thought of the caveman act, but his finger pressed her lip.

"Stay." Was the simple demand. "Do not move."

_He's not compelling me_, she realized.

He moved away like a hulking shadow, his usually graceful stride much more a prowl as he crossed the room and pulled open the double doors to his wardrobe, disappearing into it.

Klaus just got out of his way, and leaned his shoulder to the wall nearest to her, tilting his head like a curious puppy at her.

"What did I do?" she asked him. She didn't dare move off the bed, her knees locked together, hands fretting at the hem.

"If I were to guess," he said slowly. "You might've made him think you're convinced he doesn't care about you."

"Wait - I know he cares," she said quickly. "But this - he can't. That's - that's not the agreement, here. What's he doing? He can't - Klaus, what is he gonna do?"

"I don't know, love."

"Is he going to hurt me?"

Klaus cut his eyes toward Elijah, who had stopped finnicking about in his wardrobe. He shut the doors swiftly, every line stretched taut in his back as he stood in front of the shut door and just stared into the wood.

"What?" she asked Klaus. He held a finger to his lips and she paid precisely zero attention to it. "Wait, what? Is he gonna hurt me or not?"

She swallowed a nervous mouthful at the quiet. Her eyes were so dry. And her throat hurt. And her face stung. She shifted on the bed and tugged on the shirt, feeling it go tight over her hips and thighs.

"If you're going to try and -" she said.

"Stop." He demanded, and turned toward her. He had silken rope in his hands, dyed a bright, brilliant red. He pulled it over his knuckles and then let it loose, and she darted her eyes to the door. "Do not move."

Even if she wanted to, she wouldn't. There was a degree of physical trust with Elijah so her fear wasn't truly that he might do her real harm, but this little display had her ten kinds of nervous.

And the way Klaus was acting, so carefully out of his brother's way? Unnerving. She thought of how hurt his ass was, and squirmed on the bed.

Elijah flexed his fingers at her, coming to stand at the bed.

"Hands."

She blinked at him.

"What happens if I say no?"

"Say no," he said simply. "Find out."

Her heart squeezed, and she glanced at Klaus, who was watching her intently.

Slowly, she offered her wrists, cringing a little at the specks of blood on his otherwise bright white shirt. He looped the rope around her with no difficulty what-so-ever, swift and business-like to pull them so her palms were touching as though in prayer. He tested the slack around her grip with a finger, then nodded to himself and went on his knees, sliding the rope through the middle of her wrists to bring it down to her knees.

"What are you doing?" she asked, yanking the rope short.

He lifted his brows at her.

"I'm tying you up."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to look after you," he said patiently. "And I think you're not going to let me."

"No," she said flatly, and pulled on the rope a little harder. "Red. _No_. I don't want you to tie up my legs."

To her absolute shock, he broke into a soft smile.

"Good," he said, and pressed a kiss to her knee. He stood and pulled on the rope to lift her hands to his mouth, kissing the back of each hand. "Good girl, Caroline. You may always tell me no."

She was so confused. She looked at Klaus for guidance. He just shrugged a shoulder.

"I always tell him to sod off," he said mildly. "I never get given more than I am due."

Elijah tugged the rope and got her attention. He was looking down at her like she hung the moon, soft and warm, smiling faintly.

"What are you going to do?" she asked him with a frown. "Why do I have to be tied up, if you're just going to do your version of looking after me?"

"My version?" he repeated.

"Yeah," she said slowly, flicking her eyes over to Klaus. "Isn't... this... sex?"

"This is keeping you busy," he said calmly, and cupped her face in both his palms. "I want to put you in a submissive place and make you feel looked after. Can I do that?"

"You're asking now?" she muttered, pulling her face away from his hands. "You can't just go around carrying people half naked into your bedroom. That's scary."

"I meant to be frightening," he assured her, and arched a brow. "If you think you're getting out of a severe talking to, you are very wrong. I am not my brother. I will not be persuaded away from difficult conversations with sex. Tying you up was not solely for my benefit; if you run, I will chase you, and I will catch you. I don't imagine you'll feel good about that."

She scowled at him.

"You could just talk to me," she grumbled.

"And you're quite happy to talk?" he wondered. "If I ask you difficult things, will you give me honest answers?"

"Difficult like what?" Her eyes were darting between his face, his hands on the rope, and Klaus. "It was - just a dream. I just had a bad dream. I can't remember what it was about."

"I wasn't going to ask about the dream. Would you like for me to stop restraining you?" It was very polite. Caroline just blinked at him. "I'll ask you very plainly. Tell me to stop, and I will."

Her words were gone. Though her eyes were wide and she felt really, super guilty (with the audience being her current boyfriend, and all,) she didn't speak to wanting him to stop. She didn't want him to. The ropes were giving her a sense of physical weight; she was grounded, contained, from whatever devastating reality the dream had swept her up into.

Elijah wasn't smug about her lack of reply, which made his attention a lot easier to bare. He simply guided her hands behind her head, elbows pointed at the roof, and pinned her wrists together behind her head. Securing a length of rope around her waist, he fixed the lead from her hands to it. He felt around her ribs for give and pulled her hair back from her face before offering his own bitten wrist.

"Drink."

"I don't _like_ blood-"

"And I don't like your face torn and bleeding," he said firmly. The tone of his voice made her knees squeeze together.

"Is this negotiable?" she asked quickly.

"What can you offer me?"

Her first thought was sex. It was trained into her to win what she wanted from Klaus, now. She opened her mouth to say 'blowjob?' but then saw Klaus watching with a hooded gaze. She maintained eye contact and leaned forward, giving the spilled blood a kittenish lick.

"Drink _properly_," Elijah demanded, and she latched on, sealing her mouth around the wound. It was still blood; gross and metallic, filling her mouth hotly. She screwed up her nose but she drank it, feeling her headache ease and her throat heal, her face going smooth and no longer screaming with salted cuts. "Good."

"Your good little girl," Klaus murmured, almost absently. "Obedience never looked quite as delicious, love."

Her entire face went red. She took her mouth away from the wrist and turned her face away from Klaus, burning in shame. She struggled against the ties reflexively, and made to stand up.

Like she was going to somehow walk away, storm off, with her arms in chicken wings beside her head.

Her waist was tugged and before she could get so much as a handful of inches off the bed she was yanked back down again with a soft exhale as her ribs were constricted.

"You were told to stay," Elijah reminded her.

"He can't do that," she protested. "He can't embarrass me, that's not fair-"

"I was complimenting," Klaus defended lightly. "I meant it. She looks good when she does what she's told - god knows she doesn't do so for me."

"If you're going to make yourself a nuisance, Niklaus, I suggest you leave," he said simply. "Or would you like me to embarrass you the way I did earlier? Have her watch you come undone at my hands? You might even last a whole hour, having already been spent."

Now Klaus turned his stony glare away, and Caroline saw his ears go red. He didn't say anything, which was surprising.

She shifted, her arms already feeling strange from the position, felt Elijah pull on the rope of her wrists to guide her into laying down on her back. He set up a pillow under her head, hovering over her.

"Are you comfortable?"

Shrugging wasn't an option, but it felt most applicable.

"I guess?"

"Is the rope hurting you? Is anything pulling?"

"It doesn't hurt, but...Yes. My hair is pulling." She lifted her head and he swept it out from under her, touching her face with gentle fingers. "Thanks."

"Thank you," he said warmly, tracing the shape of her brow. He dabbed the smear of blood on her chin away with the edge of his sleeve. "For being honest. I'll remember that. You're doing so well."

"I haven't even done anything," she muttered.

"You have," he said, and took his hand from her face. "Now. There are going to be things I do that make you uncomfortable. I am going to do them. You may always, always tell me no, if I am causing you distress or harm in any manner you do not like. But tonight, I am going to push you. I am going to force you to become uncomfortable with me to get what I want. Do you understand?"

"Are you not gonna stop if I say stop?" she said quickly.

"Christ," Klaus muttered.

Elijah's eyes flashed.

"I will stop," he promised her. "If your pain or distress is great."

"Well how will you know what I consider painful or genuinely distressing?" she said sharply. "I- I don't know, Elijah, this is _weird_, and -"

"Mr. Mikealson," he corrected.

"_What_." she said flatly.

"Mr. Mikealson," he said again, then considered, flicking his eyes heavenward in thought. "Or 'Sir', in a pinch. 'Daddy' is too hard for you to get your head around when you aren't in the correct head space."

She flushed with heat. Oh, she nearly forgot how easily he'd talked about it, like it wasn't anything cringe-worthy, like it didn't make her knees weak, like it didn't make her brain hate her stupid nether regions for what it was attracted to, what all her fantasies were.

"Well, _Mr. Mikealson_," she said, dripping in sarcasm. "How exactly are you going to force me to be uncomfortable, but actually stop if I'm really freaking out? What are you going to do?" she stressed.

"This can be easy," he informed her. "I don't think it will be. But it can. If you tell me what I want to know, I will reward you. I will pay you in caresses, and kisses, and I will have you see the face of God before the night is done. If you're going to be difficult, however, the opposite will be true. I will put you over my knee, and have you crying and humiliated, and Klaus will simply have to watch as I do you to the very same thing I did to him mere hours ago."

"Not that hard," she said.

"No, I'll moderate for you," he promised. When she didn't argue, he carried on. "We're going to start with what happened the first night you were broken into. And then the second time. You're going to tell it to us all. And then I expect you'll confess."

"Confess what?"

"A multitude of things," was his breezy reply. "By the time I'm through with you, I expect you'll have told us plenty more than I'll ever expect. After you tell us about the break ins, I want you to understand how detrimental your coping methods have been since you holed up in these walls."

"This is insane. I already told you what happened about those nights," she protested. "And I'm _fine_."

"You're not, and you told us the bare minimum."

"He was in the roof," she said on an explosive breath. "She tased me and then he took me to the house. I ran straight here."

"And you came in full of his blood, having walked away from a dead woman by your own hand," he pointed out, tone hard. "Start at the start. Start at the first break in."

She screwed her nose up at him. 

"What happens if I say _no_ now?" she pushed.

"Say no," he said. "And I'll show you."

Swallowing, she firmed her resolve.

"You can't make me say anything," she decided. "Unless you're compelling me."

"I won't need to," he assured her. "Is that your final answer?"

She squirmed. Holy shit. She wasn't really sure what he might do - he'd said he'd make her uncomfortable, but like... what was the worst he could do? He could spank her with an audience. That would be bad, but... only because she was embarrassed by the whole kink to begin with, and she had all these new ideas in her head about what role her boyfriend was playing in this fantasy.

But Klaus, who had come in only a few hours earlier... quiet and a little ashamed, ready to be judged... he had been such a different person. Didn't she kinda want that?

"Are you going to hurt me?" she asked in a small voice. "I don't-... I don't know if I want you to hurt me, really. I don't - I don't think I can."

"I'm not going to hurt you badly," he promised her, soothing. "I'm going to make you confess. We're getting it all out into the open. It's cathartic."

"I already told you everything important," she said desperately, and gave a little struggle against her binds. "I did, I did tell you everything important. I don't have anything to confess but that _one thing._"

"Caroline," Elijah said gently, cupping her face. She realized her eyes were screwed shut. She blinked them open and saw him hovering. His pupil quivered, and she felt her mind lapse into silence, waiting for the command. "That thing you're so terrified of telling Klaus? You will not say it tonight, under any circumstances."

"Okay," she breathed. Her eating habits were safe.

He let her go, and she found her breathing long and full.

"Start at the start," he said again.

She looked him full in his face.

"No," she retorted, and from the corner of her eyes saw Klaus straightening against the wall.

He peered, interested but still very removed, over Elijah's shoulder at the scene. And it was some kind of scene, but she was pretty sure that half the allure was that she had no idea what was coming. Her heart was in a nervous gallop, but she didn't want to red card out. Not yet.

"Is that your final answer?" he repeated patiently.

She swallowed.

"I've already told you," she hastened to add.

"Everything?"

"Like, the nitty gritty? The Stephan King book I was listening to? The Lush bath bomb I was soaking in? I heard a noise. I thought I was spooked by the book and I wasn't. I called Klaus. Klaus came and got me. It's not that interesting."

"That's not everything," Klaus dobbed her in.

She glared at him.

"It is so!"

"It is not," he muttered. "I ripped off someone's head, brother. She saw it removed, still blinking. Stood in his blood."

"That," Elijah said darkly, staring only at her. And yeah, okay. It was uncomfortable. "_Is_ interesting. What else, Niklaus?"

"She was naked," he said promptly. "Before I walked in he was talking about what he was going to do to her when he got into the room, hacking away at the door with her own knife. He was threatening to put his hands on her and fuck her, make her like it. That's when I killed the landlord."

Caroline shut her eyes tight. She hadn't known that he had heard all of what Ray had been saying. How he'd said something about being her daddy. How it made her stomach roll and a very small, dark voice in her head dare her to kinda like it.

Hadn't she enjoyed rough sex before? What was the difference? Wouldn't playing along save her life?

Filth. She was utter filth. She felt her very guts curdle at the memories and shook her head.

"I'm done," she said flatly. "I'm not doing this any more. This is done. Untie me. Untie me right now."

"Safe word, and I will," said Elijah.

"Untie me." She kicked her legs and rolled up onto her side. "Right now!"

"Why are you upset?" he murmured. "Tell me."

"I'm _leaving_-!" she said, and was kept down with a hand on her chest, kind of firm against one boob. She looked at it, shocked, and then up at him with her mouth open. "Get off!"

"You're not going anywhere," he told her sternly, removing his hand. "At the very least you'll tell me why you're upset thinking about this now. Is it about your friend, that Niklaus killed?"

It was an excellent cover. She jumped at the chance to claim it.

"No shit," she hissed.

"Lie," Klaus said.

"Fuck off, Klaus," she hissed at him, and dug her heels in the bed, trying to move away from Elijah. He completely allowed the pathetic inch-worming, then dragged her by the loop of rope around her waist back to where she started. She gave a gruff noise of complaint, and scowled at him. "Are you done now?"

"I outlined what you would do before I was done with you," he said primly. "And you'd best watch your mouth to speak to me."

"Or you'll what?" she said, a touch of taunt lingering in her voice. She might've gotten a kick out of Klaus' slightly proud smile, which she looked at for a second. "Exactly, nothing. So fuck you."

"Hm." Was his reply. And then the front of the shirt covering her breasts was ripped entirely away. It tore where the rope was keeping her bound and pulled against her back hard. She yelped mostly at the noise, and a little at the shock, and immediately tried to bring her arms down to cover herself.

It did not work.

"Oh, fuck you," she said, straining.

"What was that?" he asked sharply.

She opened her mouth to say it again, a little louder, and felt him pull the rest of her shirt in threat. The remaining half was still buttoned over her crotch, protecting what little modesty she had left. She shut her mouth, grit her teeth, and said nothing.

"Good," he said, and put his hand over her breast. She bucked against the touch but he clamped down, and gave a squeeze. It didn't hurt, but it didn't tickle, either. It felt like a warning. It felt controlling and kinda invasive. It made her heart, already pounding, kick into a different gear. "So perfect. You don't know how many times I thought about the way your perfect tits fill my hands, Caroline."

She bit into her lip and stretched out her neck to try and hide the expression that morphed on her face at the praise. It just felt so good. It made her feel so whole and glowy. She squeezed her eyes shut and his hand relented the grip on her tit.

"I want to touch her too," Klaus murmured.

"Stay where you are," was the simple command. "You may play later."

Klaus made grumpy noises but said nothing, and stayed leaning casually against the wall.

Caroline tried to even out her breathing.

"Was that all that happened, that first time?" Elijah asked her.

She swallowed. She felt so wobbly. She wanted to fight him but the praise had made her dumb. She felt her lower lip wobble, and hid it in her arm.

"Yes, Mr. Mikealson," she said weakly.

"Good," he murmured, and kissed the hinge of her jaw. "My good girl. There you are. You're so good for me."

She squirmed, unable to stop shifting on the bed. Various parts of her demanded attention but the words were what her brain craved to get the panty party going. She wriggled her hips and put her feet on the bed to push herself up, put his mouth on par with her chest.

"Please," she said.

"Please what?"

"Please, Mr. Mikealson, can you please kiss me?"

He applied his hot mouth to her breasts, pressing deliberately slow, mind-numbing kisses to a line straight for her nipple. He lingered over the sensitive outside, delicately dragging flat teeth over it, making her arch against him. He sucked her like a hungry kitten, and she couldn't help the noises when he squeezed her other breast in his hand.

He was leaving marks. Klaus was watching. Oh, _boy_.

"Tell me about the second time," he murmured into her skin.

She made a high pitched wailing noise that had initially started out as a _no_ and sort of channeled into a vague protest.

He kissed her chest and her neck, leaning on his elbow beside her to draw up to her level. His hand steered her burning face upward and smoothed over her scrunched eye, before he deposited a kiss on each one.

"Tell me about the second time," he urged her softly. "Go on, sweetheart. You're safe. Tell me."

"No," she choked. "No, no, I don't want to, I don't want to, you can't make me-"

When he ripped the rest of his own shirt from her body, she trailed into quiet, knowing that her underwear were a soft baby pink color and definitely flooded. They'd be so see-through. She felt the weight of two gazes on her crotch and opened her eyes to confirm what she knew to be true - they were, both of them, staring at her revealed panties.

Her arms were all stretched and starting to fill with goosebumps.

"My arms," she said weakly. "Eli- Mr. Mikealson, my arms feel weird. I don't like it. Untie me."

He rolled her over effortlessly and the tie keeping her wrists pinned to the back of her head went loose. Then she was rolled back over and her hands were looped to the rope still bound around her middle, trapping them from defending herself. She struggled against it and loved the burn as she did so.

Elijah put his hand over her breast again, giving it a hard squeeze, before doing the same to the other. When she paid this exactly no attention, he plucked one nipple, drawing it out until her mouth was open and she had stopped moving.

"Does that hurt?" he asked her.

"So good," she exhaled.

He let it go, then put his hand over the breast more gently, massaging it slowly. He returned into leaning on one elbow, gazing on her face.

"If you make me ask again," he warned her. "I'm going to get creative."

"Creative isn't fun," Klaus advised dryly.

Elijah bent his head and kissed her breast.

"I know you," he said calmly. "I can unmake you without pain as well as without pleasure, sweetheart. Just speak your truth. Say what we need to hear."

"It's-" she whimpered. "Please. It's-... I can't."

"It was never going to be easy," he said softly. "But you can't let it fester in you anymore. It's rotting you from the inside. You must let us in, that we may understand what's haunting you. Do you understand me, now? Do you understand what this is?"

"An intervention?" she guessed. "A sexy intervention?"

"Yes," he assured her. "The only difference is you choose how it ends. Is it with me having dragged it out of you at the end of several hours of exquisite torture? Or is it given to me, that I can reward you? Tell me what happened that second time you were broken into."

She actually struggled with it. See, the problem was, she was just being difficult because it was kind of doing things for her to be that difficult, and she wasn't scared of the repercussions because they weren't really going to hurt. But on the other hand, didn't his gentle mouth, and his warm words, and his promise of a reward sound so, so good?

"I hung up from you," she said weakly. "I was like - turned on but I was so - upset - I was in my underwear so I put on some clothes and went to cry and sleep with Elena..."

"Good girl," he murmured. "Beautiful. Keep going."

"And after a while I got up and went to - get some more comfy clothes - the vibrator I'd used wasn't... it wasn't where I left it. It was the other one. He changed them. He saw everything, he'd heard everything." Her bottom lip trembled. "He heard everything I said, he saw what I was doing, and how I did it, and what we did, and he said he could be - what you were to me."

"Where did the woman come from?" Klaus said quietly.

"I don't know," she said wetly. "Please, I - I didn't see. I don't know."

"I believe you," Elijah encouraged. "Keep going."

"And my head was just - you two had just told me - and I was so _embarrassed_ about what I knew Klaus had heard, and I thought you'd shown him the picture-"

"I didn't," he promised her.

"Well I thought you did. I went to get the bag taser - but he had Elena and then everything just went to shit. It happened so quickly. And she was already out of it by the time I got there, and then they tased me and I went down."

"Did he touch you?"

Her bottom lip trembled.

"Yes."

"Where?"

"You _know_ where," she said, as viciously as she could. "He played in the come still in my panties, and said he knew he could make me finish. He was - it was disgusting. He put his fingers in his mouth. He told me he wanted to get me pregnant, and she kicked me."

"Where?"

"In the stomach," she whispered. "She said I had everything so easy. She said she hated me. And then I passed out. When I next opened my eyes I was tied up. Cheryl was saying that she was supposed to lube me up but I was wet enough to take him anyway. I think they checked, but I can't remember. And they left me. They just left me there."

"Alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"They just left you, tied up?"

"Yes," she sniffed. "She said he - he was only allowed to like, get hard and then come and - she said _ejaculate_ in me. So he was out of the room trying to get hard. It was like insemination. He wanted to fuck me, but Erin was too jealous. She wanted him, and he wanted me, so she helped him take me..."

"You're doing so well," Elijah promised her. "You're safe, baby. Keep going."

"I slipped the ropes but my head - from the taser and the chloroform - I pulled on my jeans and they'd left a bin in the room. I didn't even try to run-" Her voice crackled. "I just - I just got the bin and waited, and then I bashed his fucking nose in."

"Brave girl," Elijah murmured, stroking her hair.

"And I couldn't... get down the stairs fast. My legs - the drugs - I couldn't run, and I_ needed_ to be fast. So I just, flung myself down them, on top of him. Hurt him. And then Cheryl - I didn't _mean_ to kill her, I just hit her hard." She turned her face away. "And then I ran here. Please. That's it. Is this done now?"

"Is this done now?" mimicked Klaus. She lifted her head to aim a horrible glare at him. "Oh please, what are you going to do from all the way over there?" he taunted.

"Shut up," she said, half sitting.

"Ignore him, he's an attention whore," was Elijah's advice. "Do you want me to untie you, Caroline?"

She did not. But telling him that, after all the effort she had put into struggling and making a fuss... She turned her eyes shyly down and shook her head, trying and failing to use her bound hands to hide her exposed breasts.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked.

"No," she said softly. "Thank you, Mr. Mikealson."

"She's so good," he told Klaus, and kissed her cheek. "My good girl. Look at you. Beautiful. Look at how this suits you, to be looked after, and how easily you acquiesce. You're perfect."

She wanted to shut her eyes to him but found her gaze drifting over his head as he peppered kisses on her breasts, her eyes focusing on Klaus. He had his lips parted and he was rubbing the front of his sleep pants lazily, one hand supporting him on the wall. What about her tied up and submitting to his brother turned him on? Who knew.

"What reward do you want?" came against her ear, and she shuddered. That seemed like entirely too much of a power shift, but one that she was happy to take full advantage of. She already knew what she wanted, because Klaus' eyes lingering on her crotch were still freshly imprinted on her eyelids.

What did she want? What had she earned?

She licked her lips, and cast her eyes at Klaus, who arched a brow in challenge.

"Go on," he goaded. "Tell him what you want. If you dare."


	13. Oh Daddy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh... this is smut. Straight up smut.  
It's kinky, depraved... dicks and pussies and kinkiness. 
> 
> It's not like, super integral to the plot, so if you ain't that kind of sinner, go ahead and don't read it.  
For the rest of us heathens, let's get to the juicy shit.

She spread her knees under Elijah’s body, her back bending to drag her bare skin against the front of his shirt.

"Can you make Klaus suffer a little bit?" she asked, voice small. "Make him look but not touch?"

"Isn't that what I'm already doing?" the Hybrid drawled.

"Closer, Mr. Mikealson," she said timidly. "Make him close enough to taste it."

Elijah's eyebrow was raised. He pressed a soft kiss to her lips, and she went absolutely to water at it. A clicking sound made her crack open one eye while she was attached to his mouth to see him snapping his fingers at Klaus, pointing to the ground by the end of the bed.

"How did I get roped into this?" Klaus muttered, but walked over, kneeling by her legs.

She hummed, and shut her eyes, kissing him more fully. After a while she reached down and pressed her fingers into her damp panties, knowing Klaus was watching, and so close, too. It was another shift in dynamic that she was the one with power over him, and she groaned at the swirl of her own fingers against her hard little clit.

"She's touching herself," Klaus grunted.

"I know," Elijah replied, kissing each other her lips in turn. "She's allowed. She's had a hard night."

"Hard few months," she piped up, and kissed the side of his face. She loved to watch his eyes flutter when she paid him those small, tiny affections, so she kissed him again, and again, and again.

"You're spoiling her," Klaus accused.

"Shut up," Caroline said in between kisses.

"You never let me out of a scene for such nonsense," Klaus said.

"Affection isn't nonsense, and you would never distract me with kisses." Elijah opened his eye and looked down at Klaus suspiciously, who was blinking innocently at him. "Put your hands on the bed."

Klaus firmed his lip and put both hands on the bed, but one of them wet slightly wet, and definitely fragrantly smelling of precum.

Caroline ogled the smear of slick on his finger, then looked at Elijah.

"Mr. Mikealson," she said sweetly. "Do you wanna touch me?"

He pursed his lips at Klaus and then smiled at her fondly.

"Are you being cruel to our poor voyeur?" he guessed.

"Yes, sir," she said, and spread her legs. She felt his warm hand on her thigh and the sparks of pleasure shooting off from the contact, knowing where it was headed. He cupped her damp panties and she made a show of humming, curling her fingers around his wrist.

He chuckled against her lip like he knew exactly what she was about. She didn't care. The tone of the room had all changed; it was fun, now. Lighter. Right up until she felt Elijah pull her panties aside, opening her up to Klaus' weighty stare, when the mood went hyper sexual. She wet her lips, breathing deep to try and make her fluttering heart a little calmer.

"Do you want me to touch you here, sweetheart?"

"Yes, please."

"Do you want me to hold you open and fuck you on my fingers?"

"Yes, Mr. Mikealson."

"Do you want Niklaus to watch and wish he were doing the same?"

"I want him to be so hard it hurts, and beg to fuck me," she said mindlessly. She bit her lips together. "Is that okay?"

"It is for me," he said easily, and lifted his head to look down at Klaus. "Verdict?"

"If I don't get to come at some stage," Klaus said abruptly. "I'll never play with the two of you again."

"Hard limit at no coming," Elijah outlined.

"And I'm not playing soft ball," Klaus objected. "I'm not obeying just because you ask me to."

"What else is new?" Elijah scoffed.

"She is." Klaus nodded to Caroline's spread pussy, where Elijah traced her inner lips with his fingers, stroking just barely so that she felt him tingling all the way into her toes. She had wisely chosen not to complain or hurry him. She she trying not to move but she couldn't help but tilt her hips.

"We can be rough with each other," Elijah had the forethought to tell her. "Klaus and I. A touch rougher than I think you like."

"No blood," she demanded, then looked at his mouth. "But... maybe some biting."

"Of course," he agreed, stroking her folds a little more firmly. "Tell me what you don't want."

"I don't want- strangling - or -" she uttered, distracted by the sensation of his touch. "Can-?"

"Can?" he prompted.

"Someone has to have sex with me," she blurted. "Seriously, just fingers aren't going to cut it. Please."

"Hard limit at strangling," he murmured, and kissed behind her ear. "And you demand to have someone inside you. Is there anything else?"

"Make sure he promises to let you come," Klaus advised in a gruff voice. He seemed a little sheepish under her wide-eyed attention. "Make sure he promises to let you do it _properly_."

"Yeah," Caroline nodded in earnest. "Yeah, that, too."

Elijah turned his head, an eyebrow raised at the Hybrid. He was still idly stroking the space between Caroline's legs with the kind of finesse a person would develop over a thousand years, knowing exactly the pressure to apply, and where. But the look on his face was so calm, and focused, that he might as well been reading the newspaper.

"You know my standard rule, Niklaus. If you disobey, I will ruin you until you do as you are told."

"I know the rules," Klaus retorted. "I'm pointing out my least favorite ones to your little pet, there."

"_Ew_!" Caroline said loudly. Half sitting up, she gave him a putrid glare. "Do_ not_. That is gross. I'm not a pet!"

"He'll pay," Elijah assured her. "And I agree to allowing you release, sweetheart. Given you follow the rules, and tell me what I want to hear."

"I told you," she said quickly. Her body relaxed, flopping down on the bed with a tiny noise of pleasure at the slow assault of his circling digits. "I told you what happened. All of it."

"And you were told that you were to understand your detrimental coping mechanisms," Elijah reminded her.

"And confess," Klaus added, staring into her hole, only barely stimulated and already making so many filthy wet noises. "I want her out of her mind, brother."

"Assuredly, Niklaus. Be patient," he said, and stroked her entrance with his middle finger, pushing in maddeningly slow.

It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough. She arched to get more of him in her, quicker, but he anticipated this and kept the rest out, moving with her. He was inches away from her face, watching her expression, and pressed a soft kiss to her cheek when she didn't protest. He did the same thing two more times before she gave up the ghost.

"I don't want to leave the house," she agreed. "You're right. I don't. But that's only because they're still out there."

"They're human. We're not." Klaus sat up on his knees to see her face. "It makes no sense."

"It makes sense," Elijah said more calmly. "But it cannot continue. You need to live your life." He pumped his finger in and out of her, spreading the slick, and whatever argument she had ready to go sort of slipped out of her ear.

"She doesn't sleep," Klaus muttered.

"I-"

Elijah chose that exact moment to get her stretched open with another finger, and her words trickled into a rush of air. He hooked them up into her body easily, finding all the pleasurable parts within her with the slow, knowing drag of his digits. She opened her legs a little wider, tilting her hips to chase the deliciousness of it, and saw Klaus lick his lips.

"You don't sleep for the nightmares," Elijah said quietly. "What are they?"

She shook her head.

"No," she said.

"Uh oh," Klaus murmured. "He won't like that."

"You had a terrible night tonight," Elijah said against her throat. He was still finger fucking her, but it was so slow. He bottomed out to the knuckle tapping against her g-spot, and she whimpered, thrusting against his hand to try and make him do it faster. He did not. "You had a terrible dream. Tell me?"

"I can't remember-" she said in a rush. It was a lie. But if he'd believed her earlier about not remembering, maybe he'd fall for this. "I really can't remember it, I have no idea what it was, please, Mr. Mikealson, I really don't remember any of it-"

"But you knew it was coming," he accused lightly.

"She hasn't been sleeping," Klaus repeated.

"Shut _up_, Klaus."

"No, don't shut up, Klaus," Elijah cooed. He dragged his fingers out of her with an audibly wet noise, and she lifted her head to see him offering those slick fingers to Klaus' already open mouth.

He made a show of sucking, she knew. She was dazed, more than a little turned on, by the hungry way he shut his thick lips around the fingers, slurping noisily. He had gone all hungry wolf-eyes at her while he did it, then flicked his attention to Elijah.

"How do I get rewarded, here?" he muttered.

"You tell me the truth," he said simply. "Truth is the game."

"I hate this game," groaned out of her mouth before she could think to stop it. She let her head fall back on the pillow, and tried to shut her legs, only to find the decision barred. "_Hey_."

They had a knee apiece; the way Elijah held her open was not as cruel as Klaus', who'd forced her leg to the fullest extent, nearly open in a whole split. He got up on his knees, and put his nose to her crotch, breathing a stream of air against her swollen clit.

He lapped at her opening and her eyes rolled shut.

"Enough," Elijah said softly.

Klaus didn't stop. He flicked his insistent tongue against her slick flesh, and she bucked her hips against him, her whole ass rising off the bed to encourage without words. He moved to suck her lips into his mouth, drawing his head back a little, then let them spring back before firming up his tongue and darting forward to fuck it into her.

"Niklaus," Elijah said. "That's enough."

"How come he isn't getting punish-?" she managed to get out, before he stroked his tongue up to assault her clit. It was good, really good, and her thighs trembled to try and shut around his ears, trap in exactly where he was. Words were beyond her, only noises spilled out of her throat.

She was thankfully watching when Elijah grabbed a handful of Klaus' hair and yanked his head up.

"Behave," he warned the Hybrid.

"I was behaving." His licked his lips, but there was no saving his wet chin and the tip of his nose. He looked half way to fucked out already - his mouth opened when Elijah drew his head back a little, but his eyes shut.

"Don't start," he was threatened. The vampire pressed a short kiss to his brow, and spoke in a low voice of warning: "This isn't about you."

"It might be a little about me if I make it so." He cracked open an eye and sought Caroline out, who quickly snatched her fingers back from where they had drifted down into the mess of herself. He winked to let her know he wouldn't tell, and she felt a breathless giggle escape her mouth.

"You two," Elijah said with a sigh. "Why did I think it was a good idea?"

"We're both very attractive," Klaus suggested.

"You're more attractive with my cock in your mouth," Elijah said, and pulled down his sleep pants. "Make yourself useful, then."

Caroline looked. Of course she looked. Because there were photos of cocks, and then the real deal, and his real deal was so close - and boy had she been thinking about it. She watched Klaus get up on the bed, using her hip as a pillow, and suck the top of the thick cock straight into his mouth without protest.

His lips were stretched to fit, but he was well versed in this particular prick; his eyes were half open, head bobbing around it, one hand going to cover what he didn't have in his mouth - which was literally the rest from the foreskin down.

Elijah's hand rested on the back of his sleep mussed curls, never steering or pulling. He left it there and Caroline felt him press a kiss onto her temple, and the two gentle shows of affection made her squirm.

"If- If you-" she said, breathing in deep.

"Mm?"

"No - not you, Klaus," she said, getting his attention with a flick of his eyes. "If you - if you hold him down, I can-"

"No." Elijah pulled Klaus' head off him, and his thick cock bounced up against his belly. "Don't even think about it."

"I want it in me so bad," she breathed. "Holy shit. I'll tell you whatever you want to hear. I want you to fuck me. Is that - are we all good with that? Klaus?" Her voice cracked on the word.

He, being held aloft in Elijah's fist, nodded and pulled his own hair.

"Yes, love," he said, voice rough. "I want to see. I want you first, but I want to see your face when he fills you."

"Neither of you are listening to me," Elijah pointed out. "I find that alarming."

"I'm listening. I'll tell you. I haven't been sleeping because of the bad dreams," she said quickly, rolling up onto her side. She hitched her leg around his hip and ground her pussy straight onto his cock, fucking against the length of it. Her goddamn hands were still tied up, otherwise she might've reached down and steered him inside her. "Can you fuck me now, Mr. Mikealson?"

He made an aborted movement to let Klaus go to unhook her leg from his hip, but the second Klaus was let go he was yanking her hips back to his and sliding home in a single thrust that knocked into her cervix. She, caught between being fucked by Klaus and her clit stimulated against Elijah's dick, cried out, squeezing her eyes shut.

It was only for like three wonderful seconds, those delicious moments of sin. And then there was no one to grind against and no one to fill her up, because Elijah spear tackled Klaus off the bed and into the desk.

She scrambled onto her knees and saw the blur of them fighting. One second Elijah was pinned to a wall, then Klaus was face down on the bed.

"Yield," he was instructed.

Caroline swallowed back nerves, adjusting her weight on the bed.

Klaus growled and his body was tight, but he wasn't actively trying to get out of it. Elijah reached down and shoved his trousers away, his free hand resting in a cup on the high rise of his ass.

"You're still red," he said mildly. "I will still hit you, and I will get what I want. You should yield, now."

Klaus rolled and smacked loose the arm that kept him pinned, rearing up to launch at Elijah, who caught and tossed him aside. Before Caroline could even know what was happening, she had taken his place - face down on the bed, her ass in the air and Elijah's hand on her nape.

She _squeaked_ when she felt him dipping his fingers down to her pink pussy from behind. She hadn't expected it. The angle gave the prodding pads of his forefingers a different kind of angle that made her sway contentedly to put her chest down, and ass up.

"Are you familiar with the term whipping boy, Caroline?" he asked calmly.

At that point in time, she was lucky she could even remember her freaking name. The noise that came out of her was sort of confused, because she hadn't been actually listening.

"A whipping boy was a slave," he said, continuing to stroke her shiny cunt. He slid in another finger and she jolted, mewling, almost loud enough that she couldn't hear what he was saying. "For the rich. And when the rich had misbehaved, they were to be punished. But instead of having that punishment received, the whipping boy took it instead. Often a caning. Tonight, I think I'll use my hand."

A sense of foreboding crept up her spine.

"But-!" she said, and felt her everything clench up. Even around his fingers, as if to prevent his gentle teasing - he slid out of her and rubbed her ass. "I didn't do anything wrong!"

"You started this little display of rebellion," he corrected. "We were getting along so well beforehand."

"No, don't," she panted. "I'm good, I'm being - I'll be good-"

"You will be. Niklaus, kneel on the bed."

She struggled to look up at the Hybrid who was visibly sulking and had drywall in his hair. He didn't move a muscle, just pouted and looked put out.

The first smack on her bare skin made Caroline cry out from shock, rather from pain. The bloom of warmth in her skin began to swirl and she found herself shooting forward, only to be yanked back by the rope still wound around her middle.

"Get on the bed," Elijah demanded.

Klaus didn't move. She got two hard smacks in the same spot, and okay, the tips of his fingers flicked and_ hurt_, made her try and flatten out to avoid it. Again, she was hoisted up and back onto place by the rope, and she put her head down on the soft covers and squeezed her eyes shut, waiting.

Nothing happened for a long second.

"You know your safewords," Elijah mentioned calmly. Caroline didn't say a single word, her idiot monkey brain hungry for the heat of the next strike to her backside. 

Her heart throbbed three times, and then she heard a whistle and a clap. _Then_ the pain of a really hard whack, followed by several other short ones, made her shout and try and scoot forward. Elijah caught the rope around her waist and kept spanking her, dragging her back to deliver the punishment while she kicked and writhed and burst into tears.

"Ow, fuck - ow, ow, no, _ow_-!" She wept, kicking her legs. The air was restricted in her lungs when she was hauled up, put on her knees, which she immediately fell out of, twisting to the side. Could she safeword? Should she? She didn't want to - but_ fuck_! His hand was worse than any belt, and paddle, holy Jesus - "Ow, _ow_ \- for fuck's sake, Klaus, _get on the fucking bed_!"

Elijah let up for a minute, and she breathed hard into the covers. He reset her up, ass in the air, smoothing his hand over the small of her back with a murmur of what sounded like the word _perfect_. It was the sting of pain zinging in her skin, and the injustice of serving out someone else's sentence that made her eyes well with tears.

Weight on the bed made her nearly sag with relief. She blinked open wet eyes to see Klaus kneeling in front of her, still rock hard and waiting.

"Caroline," Elijah said mildly. "Your gag has presented itself. Please suck."

She shook her head.

"I beg your pardon?" he asked dangerously.

"No," she said bitterly. "No. He got me hurt. I don't want to."

Elijah bent over her, his clothed cock straining under the fabric as he fit between her burning cheeks. His arm kept her bent in place, so she was nursed to every inch of him as he folded over her. The abrasive material of his sleep pants on her raw skin made her squirm.

"My poor, sweet girl. Open your mouth, sweetheart, and suck him, please."

"He _hurt_ me. I don't wanna." Her voice had gone all weird and pitchy. Whoever she had been before, she was not the same person now. "He got me hurt, Daddy."

His cock actually twitched at the word.

It made her feel powerful. Powerful but still hurt. She turned her face to him and gave him her biggest batted lashes, pouting, and waited for the verdict.

"There she is." Elijah stroked her full lower lip and sighed, eyes only on her mouth. "Hello."

"Hi," she murmured. "Haven't I been good?"

"Yes," he concurred.

"And then I got spanked," she said. "That's not fair."

"You weren't all the way good," he informed her. "You tried to fuck me and involve Klaus to hold me down. That isn't being good."

"I just wanted your cock in me," she simpered. "I just wanted you to fuck me. Is that so bad?"

"Jesus Christ," Klaus said harshly, and when Caroline looked up he was stroking himself.

Elijah kind of looked bewildered by the shift in her personality. She wondered if he'd pieced together that it had been born in the shame of the spanking, that particular floaty place in her mind. She watched Klaus stroke himself a little roughly and then blinked innocently at Elijah. She leaned forward with pursed lips and he kissed her gently, bringing her up onto her knees to hold her tightly to his chest. He swayed her side-to-side as though he heard music, cupping the back of her head.

"Let me play," she said against his mouth. 

He pressed a kiss to her lip and shut his eyes when her fingers rubbed him over his sleep pants.

"Bend over," he instructed, and she did, curving her spine so her ass was in full display. Klaus might've said earlier that the little girl she was when she played was a performer... He was right. There wasn't room for shame, only for good and bad behavior - she waited with her fingers toying the very top of her fat clit, waiting for the next directive.

"Please fuck me," she said softly. "Oh please. Please fuck me, daddy. I want it, want it so bad."

"Tell me," he said, and sounded so even. "Do you understand that you can't stay in the compound and waste your life away?"

"Yes, daddy." She shut her eyes. She was so serene. The sting in her ass wasn't even that bad, anymore, but it had been enough to slip her into character. She just went with it. It was better than struggling against it.

"What are you going to do to fix it?"

"Go out more," she said. "But I want someone with me."

"Of course." He rubbed her back. "Of course, baby. You'll always be safe."

She heard the snapping of fingers and the weight shifted on the bed as he said something firm in a different language that rolled in the air. She sighed and waited patiently to be stretched out on his thick rod, but she knew it was Klaus by the butt of his long head bumping into her insides.

She breathed around the intrusion anyway, and wiggled when he didn't move. When she glanced back over her shoulder, the brothers were kissing, long and slow, and she made herself busy shifting her weight to get the tiniest little fucks off against Klaus' cock. He reached down and grabbed her red ass without ever surfacing, and she made a noise of protest, causing Elijah's eyes to flutter open.

"Trouble," he muttered, apparently to himself, then laid out next to her, slipping off his trousers to reveal his swollen cock once more. He spat into his palm and wet the length, giving one pump. It was echoed in her. When he gave two shallow ones, she received two shallow ones.

"Oh," she said in understanding. He was still in control of Klaus. He was using himself like a controller. "Oh, daddy, that's not fair."

"Nothing pleases you, does it?" he mused. "Come here, baby, give daddy a kiss."

She mewled at the things he was saying and the feel of Klaus' cock in her when she moved across the space to deliver her kiss. He must've jerked himself because she was fucked into shortly, the motions repetitive. One was so hard she unseated from his mouth to gasp against his cheek.

"Gently, Niklaus," he murmured. "Be gentle with her now."

"She wants to be fucked," he said through his teeth. "I can feel her trembling around my cock, brother. If I fuck her hard, now, I can feel it. She will come."

"That is why we are being gentle," he said. This went on for maybe a minute more, maybe two at the most? Who knew. Caroline sure couldn't gauge time. There was a chance that she couldn't read, in her current state. Everything was in this incrdible haze; all the world was in that room. Pleasure, pain, rules, and safety. Her Originals would keep her safe. 

"I wanna come," she whispered against adoring lips. Elijah's lips parted shakily, but before he could give an instruction, she brattishly interrupted. "Daddy, I've been good. I wanna come. You promised."

Klaus snickered and gave a wayward hard jolt of his hips that bounced her an inch higher on the bed.

"You two may fuck, _slowly_." For a long moment, Elijah's eyes filled with black, and his gaze locked on the moan that poured out of her mouth. He kissed her nose and her cheek and then went off the bed. Klaus was following his own steady rhythm, barely abiding by the very simple instruction to be slow. "I'll be back in just a moment. Be good." 

Once the door was shut behind him, Klaus wasted no time in driving into her hard, leaning down to wrap his hand around her mouth and cut off most of the noise. He fucked her like an animal, grunting and getting sweat on her back. He put flat teeth in her shoulder and breathed hotly over the skin, pounding inside fast.

She tried to tell him to stop, to be good, but his hand kept her quiet. And hers were still tied on her waist, so she couldn't fight him off. She groaned though her nose, eyes rolling shut, and her hungry hole clamped down around his cock, circling her hips to try and fit more of him inside of her at once.

"That's_ my_ girl," Klaus said victoriously, kissing her temple.

She clenched down around the throbbing member as he slowed into a more regular fucking, sliding in long and deep while she spasmed around him. He let go of her mouth.

"He's gonna punish me," she hissed.

"No he won't," he promised her, grinding into her with both hands possessively on her hips. "You didn't do anything."

"I came," she whispered, and put her head down on the bed. "Fuck. Fuck you. You made me come."

"That wasn't a rule you had to follow. I wonder, love - can I make you come again?" he said, almost threateningly, and reached between her legs to flick his fingertips against her clit. She bucked and writhed, trying to shut her legs to him.

"_Don't_-" she jolted.

"You could, couldn't you?" he said. "Give me another, love."

"Klaus," she whimpered.

"Go on, I know you can," he cooed. "Go on, princess. Come for me."

The fireworks that skittered over her spine at the endearment made her fuck back against him. He'd always called her love, but _princess_ fit in her ear like it was made exclusively for her.

"Yeah," she said. "Yes. I'll come for you, yes."

It was over in a minute, maybe less, her clit still so hard and full of blood that his teasing of it sent her catapulting into the abyss. It wasn't as intense - a fluttering of her internal walls and a lot of badly restrained moaning, her thighs shuddering as he continued to pound into her.

He kissed the back of her shoulder and swore in a different language, then began to really fuck into her hard. His long prick battered against her insides and she yelped on every thrust, no longer able to be discreet. She knew he had started to come inside her, but he withdrew before he really filled her up.

She sunk without support and sprawled, breathless, so sensitive. The come that had spilled in her was starting to pool between her legs, and she dazedly lifted her head to see Elijah holding Klaus captive while his cock spat out ropes.

Elijah didn't seem too phased. He strangled his brother in one hand, toes scrabbling against the floor.

"Hm." He said, when Klaus had finished shooting, and let him drop to the floor in a heap. "If you're clever, you won't move until I ask you to."

"Never claimed to be clever," Klaus said roughly. There was a dark smudge around his throat, already reddening and then healing.

"No," Elijah agreed. He was in different pants and a soft looking grey t-shirt, observing Caroline's sleepy sprawl on the bed. He tilted his head at her and gave her a little smile. "To whom am I speaking?"

"Princess," she said, voice small.

"Ah," he said slowly. "Princess. Suits you."

"Thanks daddy," she said, and meant it. She shifted and lolled onto her back, legs kept neatly together. She rubbed her face against the pillow and shyly looked out at him from behind the swell of it, hands nervously twisted together. "I came."

"I was listening," he assured her. "I also anticipated it. He's too rough with you."

"Mm. No. I like that." Blinking widely at him, she squirmed under his attention. "Are you gonna spank me, daddy?"

"No, baby, I'm not going to hit you any more tonight. I got what I wanted."

"Oh..." Though she tried not to sound disappointed, it was unavoidable. "Well can I suck you?"

"I'm spent." He motioned to himself, then waved his hand at the door. "That's what I went to do. To clear my head. Now. How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," she murmured. "Why didn't you finish in here?"

"Things were happening very quickly. I wasn't sure I should," he said patiently. "We do need to talk about all of this, when we're all a little clearer, with a little more rest behind our eyes, hm?"

Ordinarily, open lines of communications were a blessing. She should've been ecstatic. Except the content and potential consequences made her head spin.

"Where's Klaus?" she said quietly.

"Klaus is on the floor, behaving," he said and glanced down. "Sulking might be a more appropriate word for what he's doing. He does hate a ruined orgasm."

"I wanted him to come in me," she offered. "Wanted him to make a mess of me."

"Oh, poor Princess," he murmured, and took a knee on the bed, reaching out to stroke her face. He took the rope in one hand and pulled her over the bed to untie the binds from her belly and hands, sliding them off of her with great care. He bent and kissed her brow, temple and cheek. "That's what happens when instructions are not heeded. He knows the rules, sweetheart. He courts his own misery."

She nodded. It was true; Klaus had been given a clear instruction and immediately tried to undermine it. She was half-lidded and tired, exhausted, sensitive and kinda swoopy. She reached for him and he kissed her fingers, then her palm, holding it to his cheek.

"Smells like sex in here," she said absently.

"It does," he agreed with an amused twist to his mouth. "Are you feeling good or bad, Caroline?"

She winced at the name, took back her hand to tuck it under the pillow she'd dragged along with her. She wasn't ready to face the consequences of the things that happened between them. She wasn't ready for the whole... adult part of what they had started. She didn't want it to end.

"Fine," she muttered, and tried not to sound like a brat.

"Are you lying to me?"

"No," she said, and might have even meant it. She managed a smile. "I'm okay."

"Good. That means you're going to sleep in that sweat..." His eyes flicked to her back, then to her crotch. "And that come between your thighs. Would you like Niklaus up on the bed with you?"

"And you too."

"Where will I fit?" he arched a brow.

"I don't know," she said sheepishly. 

"All three of us can't fit here," he told her warmly. "I appreciate it."

It was his room. His bed. If only she and Klaus would fit, where would Elijah go?

Unless he actually went somewhere.

She scowled.

"Don't go," she said. "Please."

The way his face softened for her made her stomach swoop with emotion she couldn't identify. He stroked her face with hands that smelt faintly of soap, and she kissed what she could reach.

"Difficult and needy," he murmured to himself, then hauled her up into his arms, pressing his mouth against her much lazier one. He kissed and kissed her, and she started to hum and squirm, started to think maybe she could go again. Maybe he would fuck her this time.

"You're turning her on," Klaus mumbled.

"Yes, Niklaus, I am aware of that," Elijah drawled against her chin, and sucked gently at her earlobe, making goosebumps explode on her left side. He kept her against him, one arm wrapped around her to keep her upright, the other rubbing boldly over her stinging ass and thigh; she hissed against the gentle kisses at the sharp pain, and he withdrew.

"No no no," she said quickly.

"Yes yes yes," he countered.

"Kiss me. I'll be quiet," she promised him, and stole a kiss. "I'll be quiet, please, don't stop."

"You are so tired, sweet girl." He smoothed his hand over her face, stroking her like a priceless work of art. "Won't you lay down and rest, now?"

As though drugged, Caroline followed the lead of that guiding hand onto the bed. She allowed him to pull the blankets from under her heavy body and draw them back up over her hip. He undid the knots at her waist and let free her hands, winding the rope in a neat circle before climbing off the bed and depositing it on the desk.

Caroline felt sadness and knew it was only a result of her pain high crashing back down. She hugged herself and tried not to let it show on her face, how much she needed something softer, in that exact moment.

He probably wasn't interested anymore, having gotten what he wanted. He was just being kind.

"On the bed, Klaus," Elijah instructed casually.

Klaus got up, come drying on his stomach, and pulled back the covers to settle right next to Caroline. He wasted no time in scooping her closer, tucking her head under his chin, forcing his spare arm to wiggle under her neck as a pillow.

It felt better to have Klaus there to cling to. But things... things were adjusting in her brain. There was a sick feeling lingering in the top of her guts about what she would have to say to them in the light of day. Her ass wasn't even that sore, but the fact that it had been hit again didn't go unnoticed by her body.

She quaked, and clung, and tried to sort through all her thinking.

"You're alright, love," Klaus said softly, and kissed her brow.

She didn't _feel _alright. She swallowed back those words and then squeezed her eyes shut, hiding under his chin.

More weight on the bed made her smush her nose up beneath his throat to make the room go dark. The prickles of his unshaven skin chafed her, but she didn't particularly care.

Elijah, who had settled on the other side of Klaus, snaked an arm around his brother's waist to touch her bicep.

"How are you feeling?" he asked her again.

She didn't really want to talk to him. If he wanted to leave, he should've just left.

"Fine." It sounded grumpy, even to her. When his fingers smoothed over the bone of her elbow, she flinched and pulled it away, making her excuse to take off the tattered remains of what was once his shirt. Now that she was sitting (it stung but it wasn't entirely unbearable,) she kept her back to them both and felt her throat flex around oncoming word vomit.

But what could she possibly say?

"You don't seem fine," Elijah said.

She wanted to lose it. Really. The instinct was to scream and yell and make him understand that she hadn't wanted things to get so complicated. She had wanted the sex, yes. She had wanted the kinks. But all these emotions? They were gonna ruin everything. She resolved to say nothing and laid back down, turning to nestle her backside against Klaus' front.

"You're alright," Klaus muttered. He put his arm around her and kissed the back of her neck. "Go to sleep."

Everything was in ruins.

This was going to ruin everything.

She kept her eyes open and blinking for the first few minutes, strung like a wire, but eventually, with Klaus' heat and her own emotional exhaustion, she drifted in the abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also reviews feed the author... and the story is nearly done on my end of things so wish me luck!  
Maybe four-ish chapters left? Nothing set in stone yet.  
I am writing like four stories at any given time so reviews matter in terms of how I prioritize the work I do (provided the muse is good.)
> 
> SO MAKE YOUR GUESSES AS TO HOW IT ENDS.  
(because I don't know yet?????)
> 
> kthnkxbyyyyeeeeee


	14. Oh, The Places You'll Go

"Where are you going?" Klaus' voice was rough with sleep.

"I'm making breakfast," Elijah replied softly. "Are you going to have some?"

Klaus grunted, snuggling back into Caroline.

"I'll take that as a no."

The room filled with the early morning light for a second when he opened the door and exited the room.

Caroline felt Klaus' fingers thread in her own, and gave them a squeeze.

It didn't feel blasphemous. It didn't feel like hell. It didn't feel like she'd betrayed someone, or started something she couldn't stop. In those lazy moments, wrapped in the Original Hybrid, she felt a moment of peace, though no quiet in her head.

Something Elijah-shaped was missing.

But shouldn't she have just been happy with Klaus?

"I have to pee," she said, and Klaus kissed the spot behind her ear before he opened up his arm, earning a half shuttered look over her shoulder.

"Alright?" he murmured.

She didn't answer.

He cracked open an eye and watched her lethargic roll into sitting. Pausing with her knees hooked over the mattress, she rubbed her hands together and felt the mess of the night lingering on her skin. Was she alright? 

"I need to shower," she muttered.

"That didn't answer my question," he said softly. The pads of his fingers touched the notches of her spine, seemingly tracing each and every vertebrae of her lower back. "Caroline, are you alright?"

There were so many things _not alright _with her. Privately, the one that was most solidly at the forefront of her brain was the total mess of these most treasured friendships. How would she ever be able to look at either of them again? This was disgusting. She was disgusting.

And now they knew it too.

"I need to shower," she repeated, and got up, scurrying quickly to shut the door between them.

Almost naively, she had assumed that she felt so filthy because she had slept in the remnants of sex and sweat; she'd marinated, sticky and fragrant, and thought that the hot water and soap might make her feel clean. Except she scrubbed her arms and between her legs until both were sensitive to touch before she realised that no, the dirt was under her skin, because she was the filth.

Leaning her shoulder to the tiled wall, she slid down into a pile of exhausted limbs. She was just so _tired_. Her soul was like, crying. Her head was full of mold and cotton. Even though she rubbed her chest to make sure her heart wasn't banging outside the cage of her ribs, it still felt like it.

Like her heart wasn't in her chest anymore.

Time passed, and she stayed folded in the shower. Grateful for the never ending beat of hot water against her skin. She touched her own ass but nothing stung - was she disappointed that it didn't linger? Had she _wanted _to be hit hard enough to bruise?

Who did that?

Why the fuck was she so - fucking - broken?

Who took life-line friendships with incredibly dangerous men and made them somehow _even more twisted_?

Klaus had tried to kill her, for Christ sake. He'd tried to kill Elena. He'd killed Tyler's mom. He was a mass murderer. He enjoyed killing. He'd killed Rich!

And there she was, playing fun-happy-sex games with him and _his brother_!

Not to mention... they were brothers. Brothers who fucked. It was disgusting, how _hot_ the whole thing still made her. The thought of Elena and Jeremy was EW EW EW but with these two?

Elena was good. Full of love. The fact that she was also dating two brothers at once was like, a non-issue in Caroline’s eyes. As long as everyone was happy and no one got hurt, why not? Against the darkness of her lids, the thought of her old friend soothed some of the ache in her rioting soul. If Elena could do it, why couldn’t she?

_Because the Salvatores AREN’T FUCKING EACH OTHER_, shrieked a voice in her head. _AND ELENA WOULD NEVER PRETEND TO BE A LITTLE GIRL TO GET HER KICKS!_

Shame crested like a wave and battered against her insides with the force of a thousand storms, forcing her to inhale against the spray to feel a little less like she was drowning.

_Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god_. And then, reflexively. _Mom’s gonna kill me_.

Which, of course, did not help. Her mother would have been absolutely mortified by the nature of these sex games, let alone to know who she was playing them with.

Her lashes were stuck together with the water pouring onto her scalp and she batted them open only to have the hot water flood into her eyes. It felt cleaner, even if it hurt.

How long she sat there was never quite clear to her, because she wasn’t paying any attention to the time. She was waiting to be collected and steered into someone’s arms. In fact she was completely planning to wait until someone wanted to come and get her, just so she didn't have to go to them. But the longer she waited... the more she was alone.

Wouldn’t Elijah be done with breakfast by now?

Wouldn’t Klaus want to cuddle her post raunchiness?

Or did they just… Not want that, anymore?

Wow. She had fucked this up royally. 

Her hands were pruned by the time she finally levered herself up off the floor and turned the spray off. She dripped all over the floor to get a towel and wrapped it around her shoulders, hugging herself for a moment with dribbles of water still trailing over her skin.

Two tired, red eyes stared out of her reflection. She looked like a kid who had been non-stop hysterical. Small and frightened and uncertain, draped in a towel like she was wearing a cape.

And it made her _hate_ herself a little bit more.

There was an urge in her soul to call out. To just say: Hey, someone come here, I think I’m dropping. I need help. I don’t feel good. I don’t feel good about where I went and what we did. I wanna go home.

She kind of wanted to break the mirror to avoid the reality of seeing herself become so undone.

Elijah would make her feel safer like a child, less like an adult reject. Klaus would stir something up inside her that would distract her from the rest of the drama circling her brain stem. Would it be sex or fury?

But she didn’t want that, right now. She didn’t want any of it. No sex. No fury. No adulting. No – ugh. No…Acting like a kid.

_This isn't you_, she told herself firmly, straightening her heavy head_. When Dad left, you swore you were grown up enough to handle anything life threw at you. This is just a curveball. You are not a little girl._

_But I could be,_ she reasoned. The shape of this voice was wearing very professional glasses with a neat updo. A scientist, maybe. _I can switch it on and off, and be both. I can be soft, and young, and scared. I’m allowed to do that, now. They'll keep me safe._

_But not sane, _combated something inside her. _You need to keep this on lock, girl. You are not a baby. You have never been a baby. You are a grown ass, well educated lady. Act like it._

_But-_

_YOU SWORE, _rang in her head. _YOU COULD HANDLE ANYTHING, AND YOU DID. YOU DON’T NEED ANY ONE. YOU CAN HANDLE ANY THING. YOU KILLED CHERYL JUST FINE._

_That is not this, _she rebutted gently. _Life or death is not sex and love._

_Love?_ _This isn't even sex. It’s a total lack of control, is what this is._

_I felt better for saying what happened,_ the Updo version of herself placated. _I felt it like a weight lifting out of my lungs. I feel better. I feel stronger._

_Strong doesn’t look like pretending to be a little girl when you’re getting railed on._ Her eyes snapped shut, teeth grinding. _Strong is putting some pants on and walking out of this shithole._

_I want to try,_ she agreed privately. _I want to try and leave, but not alone. I don’t want to be alone. But I need them to-_

_I DO NOT NEED ANYTHING FROM THEM. _

_I’m hurting, and I can’t do this alone. Help isn’t a crime._

_But it ain’t the way to fix it, either._

Caroline rubbed her face, watching the way her features dragged and malformed in the mirror. As far as total mental breakdowns went, this one wasn’t the worst she’d had. The feel of her rage was met by an impossible calm. All of it made her feel a little queasy.

_Help_, she wanted to say_. Klaus, I don’t feel good about what we did…_

_Yeah, that's probably the mastermind plan, _mocked a voice inside her mind. _To make you feel young and dumb and needy._

_I’ve always been needy,_ she tried to remind herself. It went mostly unheard. The thought of the Originals playing mind games with her was not a new thought… But this time the accusation came with a suspicious amount of weight. _Klaus and Elijah wouldn’t play games with my head like this._

_They would so. It’d probably be fun for them. They have all the say and call all the shots, and they didn’t even have to compel you._

_What if they’ve compelled me? _Whispered through her brain, like a ghost.

_They aren't like that,_ she defended. She summoned all the images of love, affection, and kindness between them. Surely it wasn’t a trick. Surely it couldn't have been. _It doesn’t serve any purpose to make me feel-… the way I feel._

_The purpose is that they win. _ _The purpose is that it’s fun._

_If it had been mind games, Klaus had time before Elijah was ever involved, _the more sensible part of herself rationalized. Her voice was a little shaky. The images of their warm glowy moments were starting to fade, and sputter out like a candle. _Klaus and I never played games like this._

_No, his games looked more like killing people and yelling at you when he didn't get his way,_ the cold drawl echoed in her brain. Her hands dropped to the basin in front of her. The reflection straightened a little more, and squared her shoulders a little more boldly. _But at least it was your choice to yell back at him._

_I don't want to fight with him anymore,_ she confessed. _I mean, I like being soft and young. I like the way it makes me feel, when I'm - Princess. Like they adore me, and they want to do right by me. Like I can just - say and do anything, be a brat all I like. I’m a weird kind of free. I like being taken care of._

_Take care of yourself_. Energy thrummed in her veins, dragging her vulnerable heart back through the bones of her rib cage. Fortifying, the strong, loud part of her spirit filled her skull like a vengeful ghost. _They want you like this so they get what they want! What do you want?_

What did she want?

_What I want isn't what I need_, whispered the quiet child's voice in her soul.

_Say what you need._

_There’s nothing wrong with being taken care of, _she tried to argue, the tone uneasy. _I liked everything that happened. I want to do it again. It’s just new, and scary-_

_What do you want,_ repeated the louder voice. _What do you need?_

_I don’t want to think about this anymore,_ she admitted hastily. _I know I don’t want to think about this, and I know I’m – overwhelmed, and so much has happened lately, and-_

_They’ll talk to you whether you like it or not, _that furious voice snapped. _They'll make you._

_No. _It didn’t sit right with her. It didn’t feel like it was what would happen, but it also wasn't outside the realm of possibility. _No, they’ll- they’ll understand I just need some time to – think, and – _

_They didn’t give you a choice last night. _

The image of Elijah’s resolution to get her to speak the truth filled her mind’s eye. Klaus had done nothing to slow the progression of things. They hadn’t even talked about anything. Elijah had made up his mind that she would speak, and she had. Klaus hadn’t done a damn thing to check on her.

_I don’t feel good, _said the child in her soul. _I don’t feel good about what we did. I want a cuddle. I don’t feel right._

_What do you want, and what do you need?_

_I want to feel safe, _she admitted to herself.

_What do you need?_

_To feel safe._

_WRONG ANSWER._

_I don’t know what I want – I -… I don’t know what I want. I want - … I need help._

_Not THEIR help. What do you need?_

_I don’t know._

_I need to be safe._

_GOOD. Now how are you gonna shape up and get safe?_

_I don’t know._

_You DO KNOW. You just don’t like it. Say it. Say what you have to do to feel safe._

_I’m safe here._

_WRONG. As long as you are under their thumb, nothing is safe. You’d do anything for them. The way things are going, you won’t have a thought in your head about what you want anymore. Soon enough you’ll only want what they want._

_I don’t feel good about what we did, _the child said, more urgently. _I don’t feel good. I don’t feel right. _

_What do you need?_

_I need… I need to be safe._

_Yeah, no shit. And how do you get safe, if you can’t and won’t fight off the guys you’re screwing around with, huh? They’re stronger. Smarter. Nastier. _

_I need a hug, _the child in her soul said mournfully. _I wanna cry. _

_Admit it, _she dared herself. _Say it._

_I don’t wanna be here, _insisted the child-like voice. _I'm scared and I need a hug. I don’t wanna be here anymore._

The slow dawning realization fell into place like a blanket of snow. Clear, cold, and heavy, all the bickering in her quietened when the fragments of her mind understood the only clear path.

_I need to go_, came the breath of thought.

Stunned, Caroline realized that her hands were tucking the towel around her body in a much more adult fashion. She knotted it under one pit, lifted her chin, and took a deep breath in.

She didn't need them. She'd never needed a man in her life, let alone two.

She needed facts; logic; responsibility. Plans that were under her control, and were created with her singular, cutthroat goal in mind.

She needed a list. In the mirror, she lifted a single finger and swiped it shortly down in the steam.

1) Leave.

2) Ignore.

3) Forget.

That dewy finger swiped under her eyes to gather the tears. When had she even started crying?

It didn't matter. She was sick of crying. She was sick of being scared, and emotional, and uncertain. She was sick of calling her sanity into question, of deferring to someone else for their opinion, of never knowing what she should do. She was sick of leaning into her own weakness. She was sick of hurting. She was sick of New Orleans.

So she left.


	15. Oh, what have I done?

Elijah lifted his eyes from the pan at the pop music blasting over the speakers upstairs. The barest form of a smile curled on his lip, and he returned to seasoning the tomatoes.

"Told you," Klaus teased. 

"Yes, yes, you're always right," Elijah mused. "Very clever of you, Niklaus. Gold star."

"What can I say? I'm the most well-versed in handling your particular brand of punishment, brother," he snickered, dipping into his coffee for a long sip. He grinned wickedly at the arched brow Elijah shot over his shoulder. "Are you going to dispute it?"

"No," the elder replied, his own smile growing between the bracket of his cheeks. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your preferred method of readjusting to reality a little more - ahem, cuddly?"

Klaus' broad grin dropped.

"I don't cuddle."

"Yes you do," Elijah teased. "You do when you are good and low in the aftermath."

"I do not," he scoffed. "I let you alter the pain with kindness."

"And I do that with cuddling."

"I do _not _cuddle," he retorted, a little heat raising pink in his face. “You do not _cuddle_ me.”

"You do, and you're very sweet when you do it," Elijah said lightly, returning to the cooking. "How did you want these eggs?"

Klaus huffed a vague answer and looked over his shoulder, half expecting Caroline to have come downstairs by then. He'd heard the shower turn off, and the sounds of her stride as she marched down to her room, but the music distorted any further noise. No one stood where he expected her, and he felt his brow pitch.

"Give her time," Elijah suggested, closing a hand over the back of his wrist. "It was more than just broaching the boundary of sex. She came unravelled. You know better than to expect an immediate bounce back."

"She's made of different things than I," Klaus said bluntly, still watching the doorway. "I thought I had anticipated the shift in her, but she was younger than I ever play at."

"Then we will be certain to discuss her feelings and be mindful to her needs," Elijah soothed. He patted the hand under his, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "You were right – there needs to be a little distance between us all while Caroline ignores the real world and untangles her thoughts."

"I think she's mostly embarrassed," Klaus muttered. He sat back in his stool, and watched Elijah's shoulders in the neat white shirt, studying the movement in him while he mixed and tended several different dishes at once. "This morning after you left, she could barely look at me. I think there's a great deal of shame that came with the nature of her perversions."

"As though two brothers weren't disturbing to her?" Elijah commented. "If she could handle us, then she won't be shamed for having her own desires."

"I think she is," Klaus remarked, leaning his elbows on the table. Keen ears went outward in case she started to come down the stairs, but he didn't hear anything. Between the music and the sizzle of eggs as they hit a hot pan, he was deaf outside of the room. "I held her last night in an attempt to ease any discomfort, but she rolled out of bed like she'd risen from the grave. She'll likely be in a right state by the time she comes downstairs. Expect fireworks."

"Caroline may yell if that is what will serve her," Elijah said easily. "If rage is how she chooses to handle the turn of events between us, and not the other way I suspect it will go."

"And how exactly do you anticipate that?"

"Tears," Elijah admitted. "And cuddling. She's your spitting image, Klaus. I believe that her aftercare will look like yours, too. Hence the food, before we go back to bed."

"You believe yourself the expert on her?" Klaus challenged. "You don't think it won't piss her off, that you tied her up and got her talking? That you coaxed her honest thoughts out of her head against her wishes?"

"If Caroline did not want to speak, she would not have spoken," Elijah said blandly. "I did not compel her to do anything against her wishes, thank you."

"Compulsion and being undone by torrid games of domination are on par in terms of choice," Klaus said, voice going hard. "You knew how to get at her and so you did, dragging each syllable out through her teeth. She might've been your good girl in previous encounters, but this is altogether a different creature."

"It is not," Elijah said, self-assured.

"Brother, take my word for it. Caroline talks more than anyone I know without saying anything, and that is completely by her own design. She hides beneath the veneer of insipid cheerleader like an armor," Klaus fired back. "She will come to terms with what is known between us all now, and she will be in fury for having it stolen."

"I stole nothing," Elijah retorted, clipped. "She was giving me her words the same way you give your oaths; knowing it's what is best by you, but hating to acquiesce without a fight. She will be tired and fragile, and she will need to be looked after. I will look after her."

"You're so far from the mark," Klaus snorted. "My God. You wait for the rage that you'll receive. You must weather that storm, and you'll leave her to turn to me when she is through with you."

"I will not rise to her bait the way you will," Elijah said sharply. He turned the heat down on the fire and turned to stare pointedly at Klaus. "You will leave her to me regardless of the mood in which she finds herself. I will handle her _gently_."

"She won't _like_ gentle," Klaus stated.

"Whether or not she will like it is not of consequence - I will not be abrasive to her in her state of mind. I am going to be patient and kind to her. You will allow it to happen, or I will remove you from the room."

Klaus laughed, hoarse and loud.

"Caroline will want fire and brimstone, to assert her own dominance against you. I was on her side last night, and I'll be on her side today. You may put me from the room, but she will follow me regardless of the gentle you think is going to soften the temper. You'd better leave her come to me when she does."

"If Caroline doesn't wish to speak to me today, then of course I'd allow it," Elijah said flatly. "It isn't my first time handling someone with care, Niklaus. If Caroline wants to shout and curse my name, then she should. But there will come a time that she will need gentle, and when she needs it, I will come to her side."

"Cuddle her back to full sanity?" Klaus bared his teeth in an awful grin. "The way you did to me?"

Elijah pointed at him with a spatula.

"Your sanity has nothing to do with our bedroom games, thank you very much."

"No, of course not," Klaus said, still showing his teeth.

The spatula went down between them. A lingering moment passed, where silence filled the space beneath the bass of the speaker upstairs. Elijah's shoulders went down, and Klaus' cruel smile faded, until they were both just staring at the other.

"I wasn't too hard on her, was I?" Elijah said slowly.

Klaus shook his head.

"She won't like it in the light of day," Klaus admitted. "But I could see the relief in her to speak her truth."

"I couldn't sleep all night," Elijah admitted. "She didn't want me to touch her after I tucked her in. The look on her face..."

"Haunted," Klaus agreed. "I know. She didn't let my arms from around her. So perhaps there is just a touch of truth, to the assumption that she needed a cuddle."

Elijah smiled faintly. He cut his eyes at the food and turned off all the dials on the stove, setting the spatula aside on the tray to avoid the oil spreading everywhere. He smoothed a hand over his tie, thinking for a moment, before facing Klaus once more.

"I upset her," he said softly. "After we were done. I don't know what I did."

"You tried to leave," Klaus reminded him. "You don't know the spit in your eye, like being left alone when you feel so blindly reliant on a person."

"Was she very upset with me?" He murmured.

"Not impossibly," Klaus estimated. "Again. Let her have a good rage and shout, and then you can proceed at her direction."

"Of course," Elijah said mildly. "Whatever she wants, I'll oblige. I don't mean to contest you to say that she won't be cross - I imagine there will be a degree of it. I just need to be the one to remedy it."

Klaus nodded, absently glancing toward the door. Usually Elijah's timing was dead-on, and Caroline would be summoned by the scent of good food just as he was ready to serve it. But the frying pans were beginning to cool, and she hadn't put a foot on the stair as yet.

"I hope she isn't terribly embarrassed," Klaus murmured. He kept watching the doorway. Something was churning in his gut, but that could be hunger pains. Sleeping with a human usually meant feeding on one, but Caroline had been more or less wasting away, and likely wouldn't survive a bite. "I so enjoyed having her between us."

"Likewise," Elijah admitted under his breath. He too, was watching the door. "Hindsight being what it is, I should've taken her limits before we began. What if I have misstepped, and she won't explore that realm further?"

"There are other ways to fuck than to be submissive, and she's well versed." Klaus tilted his head. Something wasn't right, but he wasn't sure _what_. The music and heady smell of freshly cooked food was obscuring the reach of his senses. "If the kinks are what galls her, we'll figure something out."

"What if I've corrupted the shred of the trust she has left in me?" Elijah winced.

"Then you'll earn it back. I'll keep an eye on her," Klaus vowed. He sat a little straighter in his chair, lifting his nose to the doorway. "God knows she'll let you have it both barrels, once she gets her head together. Once she cools off you'll be sound friends again."

"She does mean a lot to me," Elijah admitted quietly. "If she doesn't go to bed with me, I won't bat an eye, but if she turns her face from me I will be devastated."

"She won't," Klaus chided, dragging his eyes away from the empty door frame to send Elijah a quick scowl, as if his brother had said something remarkably stupid. "She never turned her back on me, and between us I've done many a heinous thing to her and the Mystic Falls lot. A little role-play between good friends won't sink your friendship."

"If it did, I'd never forgive myself," Elijah told him honestly. "She is such a good person, for all she has suffered in her limited time on this earth. Light beams out of her like a beacon, and we the idiot moths throwing ourselves at it. What if something I did put the light out?"

"Then you will mend it," Klaus said confidently. He looked toward the door. Something wasn't _right_. Empty. Why was the doorway empty? He tilted his head to put his ear in the direction of her room, but the banging of drums from the speakers distorted any noise he might've heard. "I might go to check on her."

"If my presence is what gives her pause, I will be gone before she can get here," Elijah offered. "But she must be seen eating something. She's withering away."

"I know." He'd counted the bumps in her spine, and seen the unhealthy pull of skin over the bones in her ribs. He hadn't seen it before, but the way she had sat upon the bed in the bended position had made it very plain to him that she had lost an inordinate amount of weight. It wasn't the right time to mention it outwardly, but perhaps he'd be ordering some of her favorite dishes later.

First things first, he went to the library and shut the bloody sound system off. Why she had put the music on in there was beyond him - the library was above the kitchen, and nowhere near her own room. Undoubtedly that was why it was so obnoxiously loud, to clear the space to her human ears.

At first, he tried her room, but it remained bare. The scent of the blood she'd spilled in a fit of terror was spotted onto the sheets and he grimaced to see it, gnawing hunger churning in his gut. Her bathroom door was empty, and the closet open.

He knocked on his own bedroom door, but no answer greeted his ears.

"Caroline, love?" he said fondly. He hoped she'd snap at him, her angry face full of color and life. She might yell and curse his name, but at least it was better than the ghost that had been haunting the compound and cleaning it obsessively. "Come on, now. It isn't nice to lock a man out of his own room."

No answer.

“In his own home, no less.”

No answer.

He listened beyond the stagnant silence, the smile on his mouth fading on his last exhale. Twisting the handle revealed the empty room, and the vague sense of wrongness began to swell like a lead balloon inside his guts.

"Caroline?" he said, then again, but louder. He strode into that bathroom, then trotted down the hall back to Elijah's room, where the door stood open. Even with it promising no one was inside, he didn't believe it. "Caroline?"

No answer.

Where the hell was she?

Turning his nose to the air, he inhaled sharply. Yes, there, she was there – well, she had been. Everything was very acidic under the notes of product she had been scrubbing the damn floors with. Traces of her lingered in the halls just as well as the walls, surrounding him.

It was no good. He puffed the breath out and breathed in to the bottoms of his lungs, tilting his head to try and locate her precious human heart beat. It was alarming, how quiet the place was, now that the music had been shut off.

Wrong. It was wrong. The scent - the scent of the house. Wrong. Something was - missing?

“Caroline!” he snapped, a little closer to a growl than he had estimated.

"What is it?" Elijah said, blurring to meet him.

Klaus didn’t bother to inform him. He hip and shouldered open the door to Elijah’s room with a growing storm cloud growing darker and darker above his head. The room was empty and - and he couldn't hear her anywhere within his not inconsiderable range. He sucked in a deep breath again, tasting the air, and fled into the bathroom. This was where she had been by herself most recently, the steam preserving some of her scent in the plaster.

Upon the foggy mirror was written a list.

1) Leave.

2) Ignore.

3) Forget.

Elijah was by his side, his chest moving as though he was breathing heavily, even though he had not run very far or particularly hard to be there. Klaus wasn't sure if he spoke, because all the sound in all the room became static.

Leave?

"No," echoed Elijah's voice in his head, a split second before Klaus started running in the vague direction of her scent. “What have I done?”

Surely she hadn't left the compound. Surely! She hadn't left in - in days, in weeks - she was hiding, too frightened by the threat of her still on the loose stalkers. There was still - there was still a threat to her, out there, and they had already proven to be dangerous and sick, and that they'd take her and harm her. She hadn't left. She couldn't have.

But each room stood empty and _screaming_ in silence, and Klaus found himself starting to panic for the first time since his father died.

Had they become the thing she was frightened of? Her evil bump-in-the-night? Were they worse than rapists? They had to be. If she had not walked outside the abattoir for fear of the duo who had abducted her... had she run from them for the games they'd played in a bedroom?

Had she left him?

_Leave._

His heart squeezed when he sprinted to her room again, just to pull up the covers and mattress and check under the bed. He wasn't sure why; he just wanted to see, just in case she was merely hiding. If he'd found her then he'd make his apologies, and leave her alone if she told him to, but there was only empty space.

He couldn’t well make a bloody apology to an empty room, could he?

"_Caroline_!" he shouted, turning toward the halls. He must've missed her - perhaps he'd confused her scent? She had been left covered in sweat and seed, and she'd showered using Elijah's soaps, so perhaps her personal smell was not what he was used to? Except it – it was hidden. It was confused by the chemicals she had been soaking her hands and knees in, trying to clean their home.

Perhaps in a different time, he might’ve been a little cooler. He might’ve assumed that the lady had simply gone to take airs, perhaps a stroll about the garden to think her many winding thoughts, and disparage any gossip that would harm her reputation. Any other time in history, he could’ve reasoned that she was likely going to come back…

But in this era, that usually didn’t look like taking one’s phone…. And the charger.

_Ignore._

Every room was demolished as he pulled doors off of hinges and then flipped all the furniture back. After the first few, he stopped being mindful of having someone come in to reset it all, or the damage he was doing to the walls and floorboards when he dropped the items. After the fourth empty space and her abandoned clothes, his path of destruction stopped being about finding her.

_Forget._

Would she forget him quickly? Was it even him that she meant to _leave _and _ignore_? Was he so disposable to her? Had he hurt her? Scared her? Was he the big bad wolf to her pretty red riding hood?

Elijah might've spoken, but he didn't listen. He continued smashing things as he saw fit, rage and mourning and misery in his head, rolling like black thunderclouds.

Klaus destroyed everything in his path, because that's what he was good for. What an idiot was he, to believe that such a prefect creature would ever stand at his side, when she was warm and bright and kind and soft, and so unspeakably human? Of _course_ she had fled. Why would she want to be near him?

He didn't want to be near himself.

Elijah closed arms around him to try and save some of the books that had been meticulously organized, but Klaus threw him off. When he was restrained again, Klaus turned around and bit him soundly across the throat, digging in cruel teeth to bury the venom of his bite deep into Elijah's veins.

"_You_," he spat, dribbling blood. He stood over the elder, feeling mania flood his reactions, trying to dampen the flame of his misery. "We were - she and I - we had something, we had _something_, and you ruined it, you scared her, you've ruined this-"

Elijah's throat was full of blood and part of his esophagus had been torn out, so he couldn't speak to defend himself. With wide eyes, he gave one pathetic shake of his head, then dropped it with a loud thud as grey began to fill the visible parts of his face and neck. His eyes remained open and glassy in this version of death, and Klaus sneered down at him as though he was seen.

"I will deal with you later," he vowed through his teeth.

His hands were in fists. He was oppressively furious. He wanted to throttle his brother, but the fact remained that Caroline had only been gone an hour at most – her sound had stopped at the beginning of the music, surely. He could still find her and make certain that she was alright, and apologize for whatever had made her leave.

He wouldn't bring her back to the compound, what with Elijah being her _obvious _problem, but he could take her someplace else. Someplace nice, where she could be treated as the queen he always knew her to be. Somewhere to have a new start to the next part of her life.

The part of her life with him in it.

Turning toward the door, he spared a second only to wipe the blood out of his prickles and change into a clean shirt, before snatching his wallet, keys and phone, and leaving the front door wide open on his way out.


	16. Oh, Long story Short

It hadn't taken long for Caroline to realize that the first place they would check was her home town, even thought there was a fairly huge urge to return to safe and familiar. While her feet had mindlessly taken her to the street, her brain was revolving around, trying to calm the fear of being snatched to be made Phillip's baby maker, and plot a way to remain unseen and away from the Mikealson pair.

Part of her wanted to have already made a conscious plan, but the other part of her was pretty sure she already had one.

Ducking into the nearest cafe, she pulled out her phone and ignored Klaus' incoming call. There were already six missed attempts, and two new messages from Elijah. She didn't opened any.

Once the internet was connected, she swiped to the relevant page and hit a little green button. Patience wasn't really a thing that she did, but those five seconds were probably the longest in her life. There was no conceivable way that she had much more than an hour at most, when Klaus ran the city and had immeasurable resources at his disposal - not to mention a lifetime of running under his belt, and strategies in age old games of cat-and-mouse.

Like, she wasn't Katherine, who'd been running for hundreds of years. She might've been able to summon the wit, but to survive she'd need an edge. Luckily, _because_ she wasn't Katherine, her edge took the shape of one Bonnie Bennett.

"_Hey_," Bonnie said in her ear. "_Are you ears burning? We were just talking about you."_

_"Hey, Caroline," _Enzo said, quickly hushed and batted away from the receiver.

"Hey," she said, flat and tired.

From that mere noise, Bonnie knew something was up. That was what happened when you grew up in the pocket of your friends. Every noise was familiar, and had meaning.

"_What's wrong?"_ Bonnie said.

Caroline's right eye twitched.

"Oh, long story short?" she offered bluntly. "I'm running. They haven't found me yet."

And because she was the very best witch in the world, Bonnie replied:

"_I'm on it. Get to Louis Armstrong International. I'll cast to block any spells from detecting you. Unless they see you with their eyes, you'll be untraceable_."

"What do I do when I get to the airport?" Caroline said, nodding to the rest of her instruction.

"_Meet us_," Bonnie said through a smug little smile. Caroline didn't need to see it to know the one. She could hear it in the haughty hitch of her voice. "_We landed twenty minutes ago. I thought I'd come and deliver some of those protection spells to you myself. Surprise._"

Caroline swallowed.

"Bon, it’s bad," she said succinctly. "I have... lots of feelings, bad."

"_Hm. Dangerous._" The witch sighed, sounding like she was rubbing her temples. "_Did they hurt you?"_

"No," Caroline said honestly.

"_So I can't play with all these cool spells I learned that might kill an Original?"_

"No," Caroline said again. "I just - can't do it, right now. If I stay-... I just-... Bonnie, I can't do it. I don't want to."

_"Okay,"_ Bonnie said. "_Well, it makes me a hypocrite, but no vampires sounds good to me. Get a cab, Caroline. I'll stay on the phone."_

"Mine'll die," she muttered into the receiver.

"_Get a cab, and get out of sight,"_ Bonnie instructed. "_I'll cast now. I love you. I'm going to see you soon, okay?"_

"Yeah," Caroline exhaled. God, she was tired. She'd slept like a baby, but like, it was only seven hours out of the last three days. Her head hurt. Her eyes were leaking. "Thanks Bon. I love you too. I'll see you soon."

_"Where shall we go?"_ said Enzo's cheerful voice, still blatantly listening to their conversation. "_I'll compel us something first class. Anywhere in mind?"_

Caroline wasn't sure. Before Klaus, she had been pretty sure that she'd follow Tyler wherever he wanted to go - maybe Hawaii for their honeymoon? But Klaus... he'd put Paris into her head. Rome. Tokyo. She had been ballsy enough to move to New Orleans with the inheritance she'd gotten from her mom's death, but like - she had still not been ready to cross any boarders outside of the one she called home.

The idea had been to let Klaus take the lead on the best places to go, and things to see. In more recent days, she'd been considering what Elijah's version of the world would look like. She had been sneaking in the occasional readings of his journals, and there was no doubt in her mind he loved Scotland, and New York, and Morocco, and her late-night Googling had contained all those key phrases.

"I want to go to New Zealand," she said, plucking it from thin air. She'd never said a word about New Zealand to anyone. It just seemed like the prettiest - and furthest - place she could physically get. "Or whatever is next out."

"_See what I can do,_" Enzo promised.

"_Spells are cast," _Bonnie commented. "_How much battery do you have in your phone?"_

Caroline checked to see the tiny yellow bar, and replaced the phone against her ear.

"Like twelve per cent. It'll last if the calls stop coming from Klaus."

"_How did you get away?"_

"I put on some loud music and walked out," she said mildly. "They didn't think I could walk out if I really wanted to."

_"Dicks. Both of them. Big ol' bags of dicks,"_ Bonnie said, making a ghost of a smile touch Caroline's lips. "_It's okay, Care. We're on it. We're gonna get you in the air in no time at all, okay? Get the cab. Text me how long you'll be. We might have to get a flight delayed if New Zealand is the one you want - it's supposed to leave in like half an hour."_

"Sounds like it's meant to be," she commented softly.

Was this... really happening? Like... She'd spent so many hours convincing herself that the outside world was scary and dangerous. She'd talked herself into believing the safest place was between the Originals. And now... because of one night and a bedroom with some rope, she was what, gonna forget that there were people out there who wanted her tied up and pregnant?

Well. It wasn't like Erin and Phillip were gonna spontaneously show up on a plane. So. Whatever.

"_Got the cab?"_ Bonnie prompted in her ear, startling her reprieve. Was she really doing this? Was she really gonna board a plane and fly to somewhere she'd never been, just to make sure that she was under her own power? She had been so sure of herself ten minutes ago, but now- "_Care, you with me?"_

"I'm with you," she said, falsely bright. "I'm just in a cafe. Stay on the phone with me while I flag one down. Can you meet me outside the airport when I get there? Can Enzo just - wait somewhere else? I just - I need you to tell me that I'm doing the right thing."

"_Does it feel like the right thing?"_ Bonnie said instead.

"It doesn't feel wrong," Caroline hedged. It didn't feel wrong to want to make her own decisions. She really was sick at the thought of being made to exist in the smaller, younger, needier version of herself that had come out at some stage the night before.

But was that what the Mikealsons would even want? They hadn't pushed her to go there. It was just somewhere she fell. And they had never told her she was wrong for doing it - for acting childlike in the middle of a sex thing.

It had been... cathartic. She had... kind of wanted to do it again before they were even done.

But to admit that?

She’d rather not, thanks.

Her hand hailed a cab and she told the guy in front to take her to the airport. To remain out of sight she laid down with the buckle of her belt digging into her side, Bonnie and the sounds of milling people still pressed tight to her ear.

"_I'll see you soon,"_ Bonnie said warmly. "_And I'll give you a big hug, and then we are getting the hell out of here."_

"Yeah," Caroline said quietly. _Hug_, echoed a pleased voice in her head. "Good. I'll see you soon, Bon. Love you."

"_Love you," _Bonnie promised. "_You're doing the right thing."_

It didn’t feel wrong to move to be safe, and know that everything she was doing was in her own power.

But this particular move didn’t feel right, either.


	17. Oh, my poor brain

* * *

**Three Years Later**

* * *

Scotland was an expanse of gorgeous stone streets, bold personality, and long stretches of ancient hills that had seen many more things than anyone could guess. Like most places, it carried a weight to it's earth, and like most places, it wasn't like any other one she had visited.

The house they had rented was in the middle of nowhere, a twenty minute drive to the nearest town. A town that had one post office, one pub, and one bed and breakfast; people there thought a reasonable supermarket was two aisles long.

In juxtaposition to the constant, present energy and ready availability of New York, Scotland edged into something faraway, old-world and dreamlike. It was no wonder why Elijah had liked it.

"Scowling will give you wrinkles," Enzo teased.

"Nothing a collagen mask won't fix," she said primly, turning the page on her book. She lifted her eyes to him, standing with his shoulder against the brick of the fireplace. Beyond him, the kitchen, where the navy sky lit up the window outside. "If you want me to stop scowling, then stop watching me read like a creep."

"I wasn't watching you read," he teased. "I was watching you brood like a creep."

Rolling her eyes, she tried to ignore him and return to the book. Her recall on what exactly was going on in her novel was completely gone from her brain. Though the words seemed familiar, the events were all lost to her waking consciousness. She had been reading, but not absorbing. Her head was a thousand miles away, where it liked to drift when she wasn't actively doing something.

"I'm not brooding," she said grumpily, sliding her bookmark into the page she'd gotten up to. She would re-read it later and get up to speed, but right now, Enzo was in a mood to bother her. "What's up?"

"Oh, nothing," he mused, easing up off the doorway. He strolled in, taking a seat beside her, his long legs stretched out to turn his soles flat to the flames licking inside the metal grate. Almost nonchalant aside from the gleam of seriousness in his eyes, he said: "How should I propose to Bonnie?"

Caroline's mouth popped open, and a squeal shot out.

"No way!" she gasped, and rolled up onto her knees, facing him front on. "No freakin' way- are you serious? Are you _serious_, serious?"

"Sirius Black," he agreed, amused by the sudden pep in her.

"Do you have a ring?" she trilled. Clapping her hands together, she bounced a little. "Oh my god, is it vintage? Gold or silver? No wait-! Platinum?! Not just diamonds - uhm, is it - is it? No wait don’t tell me – but you should get - you should get her - oh my _god_, get something with emeralds in it, and you should get something softer than gold but not plain silver and-"

"I'm not asking her to be my bride, I’m going to ask her to become a vampire," he said, and rose a brow as she stopped mid-rant, deflating into her seat. A shocked, hollow silence filled the air between them, and he smiled sadly. "Ah. See. This is what I'm worried will happen when I ask. That is why I need your help."

Caroline just blinked at him.

"Enzo..." she said, a little confused. "You know how important being a witch is to Bonnie."

"Well that's where you come in," he teased. The smile didn't quite reach his eyes. "I need to plead my case."

Caroline just looked at him. In the resulting silence, the smile that he'd been hiding behind faded, and he looked into the dancing flames, linking his fingers together on his stomach. There was no anger in him. Just resigned acceptance.

“I don’t know what to say,” she told him softly. “I’m – sorry, Enzo, but I don’t think she would ever go for it.”

“She might, if you came with her,” he advised.

“No she wouldn’t,” Caroline told him fairly. “Besides. I like being human.”

“Well I hate it," he said under his breath. His toes tapped quietly on the threadbare rug, his glassy eyes reflecting the dancing flame. It spoke to the passion in him. "I hate you being human. You lot are so _fragile_. To know that you two walk around with only your human skin to protect you, and the world being what it is? The twist in my chest every time I let you leave my sight will kill me one day. It’ll be the first heart attack a vampire ever has."

To try and lighten the mood, she gave a sympathy giggle at the poor joke. He didn’t even crack a smile, so she made her face sober to address him.

"The world is a big, scary place. I know that. You know that, and Bonnie sure as hell knows that. But she is-"

"Yes she is a witch. But you aren't. And one day you two will die, and I will die with you." His head turned from side to side in a slow shake, as though he couldn’t quite comprehend the thought. His chest heaved with a deep sigh. "Take off my ring, and walk into the sun. And we won’t ever know until someone is gone. Anything can happen. Cars. Guns. A little knick on your knee from shaving that gets infected. You could simply twist the wrong way and clot something that jams up your heart. You could choke on your food. Have a spontaneous allergic reaction to something. Something could fall from the sky and hit you in just the right place. Anything."

"Or I could get cancer," Caroline said softly. The guilt made his mouth pull into an unattractive line as he thought of the fact that she had very quickly lost her mother to such an untimely thing, saying a very regretful apology. She reached out and took his hand. "It’s okay. Everyone dies.”

“But it doesn’t have to be soon,” he muttered. He rubbed the back of her hand over his. “It doesn’t have to be until we make peace with it, Caroline. Wouldn’t it be better to live a hundred years as someone strong, and young, and beautiful? You could save people’s lives. Eat the bad guys. Be the vengeful angel I know you are.”

“Pretty sure angels don’t have fangs,” she tried to tease him, but it just came out sort of sad.

“The good book claims angels are a many eyed wheel,” he replied with a whisper of a smirk on his mouth. He didn’t look away from the fire.

“Scary,” she commented.

“Not as scary as the thought of losing you two before I’m ready,” he admitted. “I can’t do it. My life, and my death, and the years I’ve spent both dead and alive – they’ve all been painful. I’ve hung on by sheer force of will, by demanding that my luck turn - but having people to live for is the greatest blessing and the worst curse.”

She understood the sentiment.

“Because the pain that comes with loss of the ones you love is the worst pain in the world,” she finished the thought. Her thumb stroked his knuckles. “And you’ve lost enough.”

“It haunts everything I do,” he acknowledged. “Letting Bonnie out tonight – in this weather, on these roads? I know that she is safe, only because I have taken precautions to know that she will be safe.”

Caroline assumed he meant the check-ins by text he insisted on. They were used to ‘_only call in emergencies, that way I know I have to answer_’. At first, they had forgotten on little jaunts here or there, until his palpable anxiety had made them guilty enough to send their ‘I’m here, safe’ texts before they even got out of the car upon arrival.

“Bonnie is a long, long way from death.” She waited until he came back into the waking world, looking over at her with shadows behind his eyes. Summoning a warm smile from somewhere deep inside, she was glad he could try to return it like he did. “She's strong and healthy, and vicious, and there are so many covens that would raise hell if she snapped her witchy fingers. Death and Bonnie aren’t going to meet for a long time, okay?"

"What about you?" he urged. He studied her face. "Don't belittle how much you've grown to mean to me, gorgeous. You know how deeply I treasure our friendship."

"Yeah, the last guy who said stuff like that wrecked it with incest and a threesome," she joked. He didn't laugh. She tightened her hand over his. "Too soon?"

"The dark place you waded through in the wake of those _wankers_ is no place I would ever see you go again," he vowed darkly. "I watched you twist and contort and lie to claim that you were whole and well the same way I did when I was finally out of my cage. It was never a joke to me to see you in that kind of pain. Don't make it so now."

"Sorry," she murmured. She withdrew her hand, and tucked it inside her sleeve to replace the warmth she had lost. "I just-... I mean. I get it. I love you too. I love you and Bon together. But what you're asking me isn't something I can answer. I think you should talk to her."

Two big eyes found her. Dread and mourning made him look closer to his true age than she had ever known him to be.

"She'll say no."

"Yeah, probably. But that's why you gotta talk to her, so she can tell you what comes next. Will you wait with her while she gets old and wrinkly? Will she voodoo up a night cream that'll keep her young for her natural life span? We don’t know.” To give him hope, she added: “She might have something else in mind. Who knows what lost grimoire we can find next?”

"It doesn't matter what she looks like," he muttered, turning to stare back into the flames. "I'll love her always."

"Bonnie won't love that," Caroline pointed out. "I mean, when I was with - Tyler, and he was made a Hybrid, I had to think about our future. Looking like a grandma while your boyfriend stays the same age will always feel a little bit wrong."

Actually, she'd never considered that when she had been with _Tyler_. There had been too much going on to contemplate anything that wasn't life, death, and supernatural politics. When the question of her possibly extending her lifespan came up, Caroline had been with Klaus.

But saying his name in front of Enzo was not something that she wanted to do. He was already super touchy.

The flash of headlights filled the room, coming in from the window near the kitchen. Bonnie had been volunteered - sneakily by Enzo so they could be alone, Caroline now understood - to go and get provisions for their human bellies, plus a little booze to warm them up a little. The house was small and well insulated, but they were so used to warm weather after Indonesia that they all felt the nip of it in the air.

"So I've decided I have a craving for a very specific brand of ice cream an hour’s drive away," she told him with a coy smile. "And I'm pretty sure I have to go right now. I think that it would be a good time for you two to, you know. Consider your options. Just - try not to get mad."

"I'm not mad," he sulked. He summoned a smile from somewhere inside, plastering it on his face for when Bonnie opened the door with bags looped over her arms. She had a dusting of snow on the top of her beanie, her shoulders and the creases of her too-large coat, her nose pink and cheeks rosy. "A sight for sore eyes are you, Bonnie lass."

She wrinkled her nose at him and his already repeated joke, quickly shutting the door and unloading the bags onto the counter. Shaking her hat hair loose, she blinked as Caroline plucked the beanie and donned it, scooping the car keys out of her handbag.

"Ugh, my period," Caroline lamented. "I _need _ice cream, and the only place that sells it is like, an hour out. I'll be careful. Want anything?"

"Ice cream?" Bonnie repeated, narrowing her eyes. She put mitten covered hands on her hips, swallowed by her many layers. "In this weather?"

"Hey, don't argue with my uterus," she warned playfully, pulling on her large boots.

“We’re synced,” Bonnie said flatly. She was not even a little bit fooled. “You’re not due for another twelve days.”

Caroline tugged her coat on, wrapped a scarf around her neck and face, and gave a cheerful twinkle of her fingers.

"Well I’ll just be going now! Text me if you want anything!"

"Careful on the road," Enzo cautioned. "Text when you get there."

"Yes mom!" she sung, the teasing lilt to her voice doing some of the leg work to soothe the ache that came with missing her mother.

It wasn't the first time Enzo had done his protective big brother thing, but it was the first time she understood that it wasn't purely to keep her safe for Bonnie's sake. He thought of her as a good friend too, and he was scared of losing her.

Awh.

As she drove below the speed limit down the unlit, empty road, she considered the difference between him and the Originals. She'd never say it anywhere her current travel companions could hear it (because they viciously detested any mention of the Mikealson name, and she was forbidden from saying either out loud,) but there were similarities in their behavior she found interesting.

Also interesting that for all Enzo was attractive and flirtatious, she'd never felt a hint of sexual attraction to him.

She hadn't felt it at all in about three years.


	18. Oh, Hindisght

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a lot of thinking and internal dissecting of what Caroline really thinks, given the time and distance to cool down a little. It's not completely necessary but she does arrive to a certain good conclusion I needed to make apparent. Lol.  
It's also the 'calm before the storm' chapter, so.... you know.

Driving by herself with no music was dangerous in a way that Enzo would never guess.

Klaus and Elijah had never been far from her mind, even after the thousand and ninety five days in between them. (Not that she had counted.)

The second she wasn’t occupied, her brain was running scenarios on an internal projector, trying to sort through the options that had once been hers. Like a ‘choose your own adventure’ story that she wanted to end differently, she went back to key points in time and thought about the many, many different ways it could have sorted herself into her version of reality.

_Let’s start from the start. _ _If you hadn’t been working so much, you wouldn’t have been an easy target for the burglars. _

_Why didn’t you turn on a light? Or even just the TV? Then they wouldn’t have broken in._

It felt like a decade ago now, but there had been a reason to leave the lights off when she’d been home that fateful day. She hadn’t been scared of the dark, then. And she had been in the bath when the sun had begun to set.

_Even if you were at home and in the bath_, _I should’ve taken mom’s advice and stashed a weapon in there._

How many times had her mother explained that in home invasions, people hide in the room with a lock on the door? And then they got trapped, and that was when people got badly hurt. The whole thing could’ve been shifted if she had a baseball bat. Or a gun.

_If you had a gun, you might’ve used it_, she reminded herself wisely._ And you’re still not quite settled with the fact that you killed Cheryl in self-defense. _

That was true. But it was unfortunately also true the she didn't regret it, either.

Killing Cheryl wasn’t the part that haunted the corner of her mind… It was the fact that Caroline hadn’t felt bad about it for years. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that if her home had been broken into and there had been a gun in her reach, she would’ve shot somebody, potentially somebodies. And proceeded to be over it in a matter of weeks.

In a different life? A matter of home invasion? She could have just shot the bad guys and then called the cops, and then Klaus never would’ve been invited back into her life.

If she had never called Klaus, Rich would still be alive.

But would she?

Or would she be alive, but traumatized for something more sinister than being unrepentant for killing a guy?

What if, presuming she had a gun, she _didn’t_ pull the trigger, or she _missed_, and one of the men got to her? Would they have followed through on the sickening threats that they had made? Ray had been the ringleader, but he had kept a friend.

_Cornered dogs bite,_ echoed a fun memory from her dad.

_And you don’t know they weren’t high. Two is worse than one._

Hmm, so the bad guys grabbed her. Then what? Would they have gotten her on the ground, or would her kick boxing training have come back to her? Could her adrenaline have been a match for the two men, or would they have humiliated her further by batting her fight aside? Would it have been hard to scream for Joyce, to raise an alarm?

_You wouldn’t have gotten Joyce in any kind of danger_. _You couldn’t have handled the guilt. _

Okay, so maybe she couldn’t fist fight a pair of ill-intentioned robber types. The option remained that she still locked herself in the bathroom and called Klaus, but the difference was that she then called Rich to mention that she had a friend he needed to invite in. Then she would still be safe, and Rich would be alive.

_Yes_, approved the child in her mind. _I like that. I like Rich_.

That would’ve negated the fight she’d had with Klaus. They could’ve gone on in their honey moon phase. The incredible heat between them in a lazy midday sun. The adoration of his hands, the worship of his mouth, and ultimate knowing of how they best fit together had been magnetic and so consuming…

But then what happened?

_There still would have been a fight_, she reasoned with herself. _Maybe it wouldn’t have been about Rich, but it would’ve been about something. And it would have been big._

They would always fight, and it would always be big. Neither of them were predisposed to polite or dainty feelings, and her tongue was sharpened by his raised voice, which he was never shy with. God only knew how mad his smug little smirk made her, and she knew that her high and mighty approach to solving his problems grated on his urges to kill.

_If you hadn’t fought about him killing Rich, would he find out that you don't eat when you’re stressed? _

_Would he have cared?_

Assuming she'd still be severely stressed after the whole incident of people breaking into her house, she for sure would’ve gone off food no matter what. Would he be mad, or _mad_ mad? Would he leave her sort the eating disorder out (the way she now suspected he had been when she'd been living with him,) or would he have gone full-tilt Dad-mode like Elijah, and cooked for her?

Elijah.

Huh.

When it got to Elijah, it got tricky to keep track of all the different ways her life could have gone. That had been a well-dressed spanner in the works she had never seen coming. For all her planning and observing, and anticipating the best in people, she had never guessed that he would be the thing that shattered her world. The second he had pinned her eating habits, he had made himself a huge part of her life – and she had loved it.

_Your eating disorder resolved itself in high school with no assistance, _she recalled. _There’s nothing to say it wouldn’t have stopped with time, when you felt safe again. It did when you started travelling with Bonnie and Enzo._

_Bonnie watched her like a hawk. _ _It resolved itself, but only because someone was making sure it did._

_Like Elijah would have, if you had stayed._

If her portion control had been kept a better secret, then she and Klaus would have had... nothing to fight about?

_Who are you kidding?_ she scoffed inwardly.

They would always fight, because _he_ always acted out and _she_ had a strong moral code, thank you very much. He'd do his stupid King Hybrid shit and she would yell at him about life and family and trying to do the right thing, and then maybe he'd get sick of her consistently undermining his behavior.

In one version of the events she imagined, Rich was alive, Klaus was only arguing about her eating - which she understood came from a good place. If any of her friends had been neglected the way she had neglected herself, she one hundred per cent would’ve done everything in her power to fix it.

Klaus was hot headed, for sure, and stubborn as an old goat, but he was a good person and a protector of the people he kept close. He was intense and passionate and had a slew of little tricky games to play. Maybe in _this_ version of events she healed herself on her own time, or maybe he helped her, or maybe he made it so that he was the one that fixed everything, and then -

Elijah…

Where did Elijah fit in, if he hadn’t been so concerned about her eating? What if he didn't fit in at_ all_?

_He fits_, said a part of her confidently.

But he hadn't always. What if Elijah was to blame for the whole _mess?_

No, no. That didn’t sit right. No.

_Elijah isn’t entirely to blame for what happened in reality,_ she told herself, not for the first time. _Although he was the asshole who outed the kink and started all the fucking around, he was not the only person in the three way._

Elijah had been the one who had swung in like a wrecking ball in a sleek suit, and dragged up all the sludge on the back of her fantasy box. He was the one who muddied the water, who made her feel soft and immature, who made the thing with Klaus so much more complicated than what it was always going to be.

If she had never revealed her poor diet, would he have stuck around long enough to figure it out?

_Maybe._

Caroline was never quite sure if anything could have been done to change his attention when she had never been one hundred per cent sure of what earned it in the beginning. Her reaction to trauma was to control the food she ate, and Elijah had seen it when she had thought he hadn’t even liked her.

But.

In one version of events… say Klaus figured her out first, and compelled her to _be healthier, love_, or something. Would Elijah have found something else to do with his time? Would he have eventually had to move out when he was no longer needed? Why had he stuck around for so long in the first place?

Why did the thought of missing out on him make her heart squeeze?

Okay. Scratch all of that. Aside from keeping Rich alive, she was going to pretend that everything had more or less been the exact same.

So the thing with Erin, Cheryl, and Phillip-

Like, it had been a thing that happened. It had nothing to do with Klaus _or _Elijah. The trio of crazies had been the garden variety human kind that had come out of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She had gotten herself into and out of the whacky plot to get her pregnant all by herself: no one else to blame there.

_Because you don’t need anyone else,_ she told herself firmly. _You’re tough!_

In all her day dreams, she couldn’t change the fact that she had killed Cheryl.

The blood on her hands… It sometimes still felt viscous, but it never felt dirty. Sometimes she heard a packet of crisps crinkling, or a plastic cup hitting a table just right, and she could hear the sound that Cheryl’s skull had made when she had bashed the sucker in. With a trash can.

But her nightmares weren’t of the woman’s face going immediately slack, or the strange way her body had collapsed like a puppet with no strings. Caroline’s nightmares took the form of faceless men and her body being non-responsive. Drugs, or ropes? She couldn’t ever tell.

The thing with Erin, Cheryl and Phillip… The aftermath would’ve changed, if Klaus and Elijah hadn’t been in her life. She would’ve called the police, but the abattoir had been nearer. Then after making her statement and going to hospital for a while, she would’ve gone back to her apartment…

Would they have been waiting for her there, taser and chloroform in hand? Would she just have been plucked from safety again?

_They still haven’t even been caught. Not even with Mikealson and Mikealson on the job_. _How the hell did they do it?_

It stood to reason that if the unlimited resources of the Original brothers hadn't apprehended the insidious duo, then the police wouldn’t have found either of them. So not much changed there.

_Maybe I would have gone home to Mystic Falls_.

That sounded about right. She would’ve expected Klaus and Elijah to come to her house for sure, but she could’ve stayed at Bonnie’s. She could’ve found a way to avoid them, and lock herself away until they lost interest in her.

_Giving up doesn’t sound like the kinda thing they do, _came the dry little thought.

_Well they didn't find you now, did they?_

_Probably because they don't care._

Her twisted timelines were heading toward the big _Aha_ moment. When Klaus and his brother had the _sexy intervention_. The-… Nearly, threesome. Elijah hadn’t – like, he hadn’t been… inside anyone, not really. So did it count?

They had only done_ that_ because after the whole – kidnapped by co-workers for the explicit purpose of being tied up and bred – thing, she had been a little bit…

Anxious.

_You are more than allowed to feel your feelings!_

_Just not when they look like a little girl who needs a spanking_.

The immense feelings of her entire situation had been a really scary thing that her heart had to process. Hindsight being what it was – the only reason she had even capable of functioning during that god awful stint had been knowing how safe she had been in the abattoir.

What if she had never allowed the ‘intervention’?

Where would she be right now? Still alive? Still travelling, but in luxury? Would Klaus have been jealous if she had asked Elijah along? Would she have _wanted_ Elijah along? Would Klaus have been bored of her by then, or would he have just been as perfect as he had been in the quiet moments of their early days?

Would she have ever allowed anything more to happen with her and them?

She hadn’t minded them doing-…their not-secret incest-y thing.

When she had been hauled over Elijah’s shoulder and taken to the bedroom, there had been ample chance for her to tell him no. To say stop. To red card out. She hadn’t ever wanted to. But if she had-?

_If you had said no_,_ you would never have talked about the things that were keeping you up at night, _she told herself bluntly. _You would have locked it up inside. You would have stayed and cleaned the abattoir until your fingers bled, and you would have called that ‘coping’._

Also - she hadn’t wanted to tell them no. That was the icky bit. She had liked the attention, and had wanted the sex. It was the ruination of the relationships between them, sure, but in no version of things did she ever end up telling either of the Originals to stop.

It didn’t matter where her mind tumbled and how many different strings she plucked to create and alter the things that could’ve been. The fact remained that Caroline knew what she should’ve really changed.

She had known it since she stepped her cowardly foot on the plane, and ran away. The solution had been very simple:

She used her fucking words.

Elijah had tried, dammit. He had tried, and she had avoided. He had been _very freaking clear_. They needed to set _boundaries_. They needed to make sure that things were _comfortable_. They needed to _talk_.

But she didn’t want to. It was too hard. Too complicated to dissect this awful, brewing _thing_ out loud. She didn’t understand a lot of what she wanted, and why she was the way she was, and had no intentions of figuring out what she couldn’t control.

God, she had been embarrassed. 

The one night threesome happened and she spooked. Couldn't handle all those emotions, in addition to everything else that had been going on. The idea of being truly known was great in theory, if one liked the core of what they were.

Being known by people like that?

It just felt…

Scary.

Having spent most of her life in other people's shadows, trying to earn love, attention, affection, and then to have it so readily available? What else was she supposed to do, _enjoy it_? She hadn’t known what to do, with two beautiful inhuman men who were so devoted to her, and each other.

Oh, she couldn’t forget they were brothers, who were fucking! The whole thing was supposed to be unholy, and evil, and sickening, but she had liked it.

She had liked acting like a -… Like a child. The concept was still Not Quite Right in her own head. But that’s what it was – a much younger, much weaker, version of herself. One that was allowed to cry, and tap out early. One that was allowed to be smothered with kisses and caresses. She had breathed new air into a long dead persona, and the bitch of a thing hadn’t died quite yet.

Caroline had really liked being taken care of, of being able to speak her truth. That part had been the hardest part, but it had also made her breathe the easiest. When the words came out, and the situation had been revealed… Caroline had felt better.

Besides. Being the center of the world? Not exactly something she described as a chore. 

It had felt powerful, in a way. The look of those two ancient men, so turned on by her… teasing her body and testing her mind, playing her game and prodding her boundaries. It had been compelling. Like she had their every attention, and they couldn’t ever think of anyone else that hadn’t been in the room.

But that didn’t mean the spotlight had been any less sudden and blinding.

Except that light - that wasn't – that isn’t a metaphor.

Coming out of her thoughtful daze, Caroline slowed the car to a crawl and squinted, putting her hand up against the high beaming lights of car that idled in the middle of a stone walled bridge. The other vehicle was smack bang in the middle of the dividing lines, cutting off her passage. When it continued to chug away with no attempt at movement, Caroline honked shortly and threw up her hands.

"What the hell?" she muttered, and tooted again.

It didn’t move, but the figure standing behind it did.


	19. Oh, Caroline

It was a nice car; one with a huge metal bumper up front, more commonly associated with Texas than the quaint countryside of Scotland. Steam billowed from the exhaust, distorting a figure that stood against the fog at the bold red glow of the brake lights.

Caroline wound her window down a few inches and ushered them along with an impatient flap of her hand, but there was a panicky cry for help before the shadow shifted.

"Oh, for the love of god," she said to herself, flicking her eyes to the rear view mirror to check no one was coming up behind her. An empty road stared back at her. Her brow drew together as the figure in front trotted into the headlights that blinded her, casting their face in shadow. Then it just... stood there. Still. In front of her car. Turning her face to the biting cold air of her cracked window, she called: “Can I help you?"

“Please?” said a man’s urgent voice. The he started moving, like he had forgotten how urgent he needed assistance. “God, please, help me, my wife is bleeding-!”

“Do you have a phone?” she called back, hand already wrapping around her own.

“Ambulance is on the way-!” he said, voice shaking with nerves. He jogged backward into the fog, calling again: “Please, please help me, or she’ll loose the baby!”

Now, here was the thing.

Her tender heart assured her that this man and his pregnant wife were in desperate need of her help. There was a time not too long ago that she would’ve flung herself out of the car and gone in with blinkers on to the potential dangers of an abandoned road and one solitary car in the darkness.

That being said, she had lived a little and come across many a Netflix documentary about serial killers and abduction techniques that gave her pause. Ordinarily she would’ve called her super witchy BFF or her favorite vamp for an assist, but that particular night was not viable. She couldn’t just call Enzo – he was likely in the middle of a very serious conversation with Bonnie. If this turned out to be nothing, Caroline would cringe herself to death for interrupting his spiel.

Guns weren’t really a thing in Scotland, but she’d always carried a knife with her from the second they’d touched down in New Zealand. Having studied martial arts wherever she could for nearly three straight years had given her proficiency enough to confidentially handle a weapon against a bigger, faster, and stronger opponent, seeing as she practiced on Enzo regularly.

So the handle of the knife in her hand, she unlocked her doors and got out of the car, squinting into the too bright lights. Lifting her empty hand to block some of the beaming streaks of light, she angled to hide the knife behind her hip, and walked forward.

“Sir?” she called out. “Where are you?”

“Back here!” he called, strained. “Please, hurry! Do you have a phone?”

“I do,” she lied. Her phone was in the car, because grabbing the knife had been way more important than the phone. “How far is the ambulance?”

“Ten minutes. Please, help us,” he begged. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

She still couldn’t see him clearly through the steam of their running exhaust, but she saw that he wasn’t looking at her. She edged through the steam to see beyond the back tire were a pair of dainty legs sticking out, laying still and face up on the ground. The man was bent behind the back of the car, crouched over the body; he was desperately mumbling something, but there was no female voice to reply.

“What happened?” Caroline said, a little more convinced that this was legit. She stepped a little closer. “Is there a problem with the baby?”

“God, my baby,” he croaked. There was a pause, and strained, he pleaded: “Please, honey, do you have a first aid kit? There’s – so much blood-!”

_Weird that he’s American_, crossed her mind.

“Yeah I do,” Caroline said, sensing his urgency. “Uhm, hang on just a second, I’ll grab it now.”

“Thank you,” he gushed. “Thank you, thank you so much, please hurry-“

Caroline skipped quickly back to her car, hands subconsciously rubbing at her arms. The knife was loosely held in her hand, the sheath making a weird noise against her borrowed coat. The stupid bulky thing was in her way and kind of sinister looking, so she put it down on the back seat and bent into the car to retrieve the kit. It was buried under one of Enzo’s spare coats, and Caroline idly moved it aside to uncover the box.

She stood, thumb sliding under the clasp, and turned to come face to face with the man.

“_No_,” she breathed out.

Madness made Phillip’s eyes huge and glittering, almost casting their own light with the glow of his attention. He was double the size he had been once, all of it serious muscle and width that spoke of many, many hours in strength building. He didn’t look away, even when the first aid box crashed to the ground between them.

“Hello Caroline,” he said, mouth twitching around the shape of her name. His meaty hand swung toward her and snatched the front of her jacket, bringing her in tight to his body. “You look… nice. Are you cold?”

Breathing had become hard. She felt like she could taste the puffs of breath from his mouth. Even if she thought that answering him would have done some of the legwork to keep him calm, whatever he had said had completely dribbled out of her ear. Caroline’s mouth was shaking and her knees were weak; in such a state of shock that her hands were loose and unresisting at her sides.

“I’m glad to see you aren’t being scared of me,” he went on, eagerly appreciating her lack of fight. He licked his lips. A rough hand landed on her face, nearly eclipsing one whole side of her head. “I didn’t want to drug you again. I like you when you’re crystal clear for me.”

Speechless. Absolutely silent in horror. Phillip stroked her face and was beaming at her stupidly, and all Caroline could think about was how badly she wished that she had visited her home just one more time. Avoiding her problems had solved absolutely nothing in the long run. Mourning her mother hadn’t ever really gone away, and in recent times she had been thinking that her next flight would lead her back home.

“Are you going to scream or hit me?” he asked her, strained but polite. “I know you might want to. I know that it makes sense. But I won’t hurt you, even if you hit me. I don’t want to hurt you at all.”

“I killed-“ she gasped. Why was she talking? “Your mom!”

“I know,” he said, nodding. “Oh, yeah, I know. I know you did. It’s okay, though, it’s completely okay. I get it. She got in your way, and you were scared. That’s why I don’t want you to be scared of me. Because it makes you dangerous.”

If cancer had been a physical person, Caroline would’ve at the very least had words with it. After her mom had died so brutally, and with such an ill-timing, if there had’ve been someone to blame? Caroline would’ve liked to have been allowed the catharsis of rallying against that person.

“Phillip…” she said quietly. “What -?... How did you find me?”

“A photo on your instagram,” he said brightly. “Well, Bonnie’s instagram. It was a photo of your passports after Enzo spilled coffee on them. The reservation for the house was in the picture. Are you fucking him?”

“Huh?” Blurted out of her mouth. “Enzo? No. No, Enzo – he’s-… Bonnie’s.”

“Ah. Yeah.” He gave a sheepish laugh, and put his huge hand around her bicep. “Yeah, I thought so! It’s okay. I would’ve been – fine, if you had. Have you had sex with anyone else?”

Quickly, she shook her head, eyes stuck on the pleased expression that morphed on his face.

“Not in years,” she admitted hastily. She tried to inconspicuously drag her arm away from his hand, but he tightened his grip with the smile still stuck on his face. “Not… in three years, maybe more.”

“You’ve been waiting for me?” he said, hope alighting in his eyes. “I’ve slept with Erin. She still isn’t pregnant. But you knew I was sleeping with Erin before and you didn’t mind, so…”

“Who you sleep with is up to you,” she croaked. “As long as they want to.”

“Erin always wants to,” he agreed. He loosened his fingers on his arm just a little. “And you’ll want to, right? You want to sleep with me? I listened to the phone conversations so I know what you like. I can do anything you want me to do. I don’t mind.”

“Uhm-“ Strangled, Caroline tried to angle herself away from, him, but he just stepped closer and pinned her front on with the ridiculous mass of his body. Throwing up her other hand to impede his movement, she squeaked: “Maybe just give me a little more space?”

“You’ve had so much space from me,” he reminded her. “I’ve missed you.”

“How did you-?” she started, meaning to ask once more about how he found her. Thoughts were tangling in her head – she hadn’t meant to repeat herself. Shock was funny, like that, making her idiot mouth shoot out words just so he stopped talking.

“Those vampire friends of yours were tricky,” he said, a little darkly. “We had to go underground for a long time. Mom had a witch friend I needed to pull some string with. New Orleans did the rest.”

“What?” she said loudly. The hand against his chest strained to put at least an arm length between them, to no avail.

“How we avoided getting caught?” he guessed. “New Orleans. It’s a magical place. The earth didn’t want to bow to the vampires who were trying to torture the witches to find us, so we stayed hidden. But it was hard. Tricky. For a long time. I was lucky I was following Bonnie’s social medias for months before you and I ever spoke-“

“What do you mean?” she said, but it didn’t really matter. She thought that maybe if he just kept talking, someone would drive by and help her. On a back country road, in the middle of the pitch black night, in freezing, nowhere, Scotland.

“Before I worked at the café,” he said eagerly. “I followed all your friends on social media to see more photos of you.”

Oh wow.

“You’re hurting me,” she said faintly. A clumsy hand barely pressed against the grip he had on her bicep. “Phillip, you’re… you’re hurting me. Let me go a little bit.”

“I’ll just get you in the car,” he said with a grin that stretched too wide on his face. Like, she had stared hybrids down that were less horrifying.

“Where are we going?” she whispered. She had an idea, but wasn’t all that sure she didn’t want to know.

“Just to a little place where we can be warm and safe together,” he said easily. “And then we can make some babies and get married.”

Ah, yeah. See that-… That was going to be a problem for her, because Caroline didn’t want babies. She had discovered that little fact about herself in one of their earliest trips to a third world country and they did some supernatural shenanigan control in a small village. Bonnie had told her that she’d be an excellent mom, because she had put herself between the children and the big bad; Enzo had said very plainly that she would be great at anything she did. But parenting was not something she should look into.

He had been 100% right. Kids made her hyper aware and uneasy. They were messy and fragile and complicated. Caroline could barely handle her own shit, let alone someone who completely relied on her.

But instead of letting her insane stalker know that, she just nodded, lashes fluttering.

“C-Can I get my extra beanie?” she croaked. “It’s just – just in the back seat-?“

How this guy managed to avoid the Originals and find her based on one lucky Instagram was completely beyond her, because the idiot fell for it hook, line, and sinker. He beamed at her broadly, pressed a clammy kiss to her frozen cheek, and let her arm go. He stepped closer when she turned

“Oh, Caroline. You’ll make me such pretty babies, won’t-?“

She buried the knife so deep in between his ribs it punctured his lung and made the air wheeze out of him like a deflated balloon. Her eyes didn’t even blink. She just felt the spread of warm blood against her fist and ripped the knife out to plunge it into the side of his neck.

The stalker just stood there, completely stunned, as his blood sprayed up her face and wrist. He dropped back into sitting, dazedly reaching up to touch the side of his neck, then slumped uselessly to the ground.

Ho….lee… _Shit_.

The dead lady behind the car? Not so dead.

Erin scrambled on the icy ground without ever managing to get to get to her feet, already screaming. She pressed a hand over his on the open gash of his throat, but completely ignored the huge bloody wound on his side.

Caroline took several quick steps away, knife firmly in hand, but Erin didn’t pay her any attention. She started to wail and scream, clutching Phillip as he went whiter and whiter, the pool of blood filling the ground around them in an ink like puddle.

_That’s the mother and the son that I’ve killed now,_ she thought to herself.

“HE WAS SICK!” Erin shrieked, looking up with wide eyes. “HE WAS SICK! HE WASN’T – HE WASN’T WELL! YOU PSYCHO BITCH, YOU STUPID FUCKING CUNT! HE WASN’T GOING TO HURT YOU, YOU STUPID FUCKING WHORE, YOU SELF SERVING BITCH, YOU STUPID – YOU – HE WAS SICK!”

Dread began to boil in Caroline’s belly, but she didn’t bat an eye. She was feeling the beginning thread of guilt begin to take root in her soul, but her fight or flight was truly engaged and she couldn’t react in any other way. Without taking her eyes off of the hysterical Erin, she backed up to their huge truck, climbed in, and threw the gear stick in reverse without closing the door.

The knife was still in her hand when she grabbed the wheel and squealed the tires as they burned through the layer of crisp ice to gain traction. She stuck her foot down hard and lurched when she finally had movement, twisting in her seat to see through the back window where she was going.

Unfortunately for her, the back window was completely solid with fog. Probably because it was freezing outside and the heater had been blasting full tilt while it had idled. It stood to reason that within seconds of hitting max speed, she had veered off the road and ass-first into a ditch with a _bang_.


	20. Oh, but such fun

_The persistent accessibility to people will be the death of the modern world_, Klaus told himself.

Not for the first time, he lamented the days that had been and gone, where the most pressing form of communication was riding a horse ‘til it dropped and delivering a message. Now he suffered through the iPhone’s unwieldy tone for the fourth time, his eyes shut to better contain the image he wanted painted on the canvas.

“Just answer it,” drawled Elijah. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I’ve been struck by inspiration,” he told his shut lids. The phone continued to ring, grating each and every one of his nerves. It was honestly a miracle that he managed to stand still as he was. “I must exercise it.”

“Niklaus,” Elijah said, bored. “At least put it on silent.”

“I really don’t think you’re in much a position to give me orders, brother mine,” Klaus said with a twisty grin. The phone went silent. He opened his eyes. “What say you?”

Elijah didn’t say anything, as he was rather a clever man by that point. Three years of being intermittently daggered and brought back to life for therapy and fucking had made Klaus both more and less regretful of the way things were between them - which might've been his brother's entire plan, if he was thinking a little more clearly. To guilt him into forgiveness. Elijah had been undaggered now for four whole months, nearly his longest stint since they lost Caroline, and he was starting to feel like a bad habit Klaus wasn't willing to break.

He was held aloft in chains, hands hanging above his head. A cushion was maddeningly out of reach of his raw knees on the unfinished brick floor, deep indents of pressure marking his skin. All that showed for his pain was a shine to his brow and a tightening of his mouth. Later, Klaus was planning to bathe him and rub the soreness away, soothing him until he felt malleable and loose. It might take a day or two, but his guard would drop, so when Klaus next had him shackled and naked, he would be spoiled enough to feel the lack of luxury more acutely.

“Very good,” Klaus mocked him. “Now, where were we?”

“I believe you were explaining to me the horrors you would have me endure, if I were not your brother,” Elijah intoned. “Something about searing my flesh and unmaking my mind?”

“Ah yes,” Klaus recalled. He dipped back into his paint, capturing the way the light glanced off of Elijah’s shackles. "If I thought you would bend your will to mine, I would have already done it.”

“I suppose I should be flattered you think so highly of me."

“Or all the more worried,” Klaus mused. “You see, I could’ve made it over and done with by now, but I can’t seem to wrap my head around the execution of what it is I _want_ from you, when I want it to hurt for as long as I am hurting.”

“Camille says that pain won’t stop until you find closure,” Elijah reminded him fairly. “Not that it matters much to you, but I agree with her. I do not think your closure lies with torturing me.”

“No,” Klaus agreed. “Nor I."

"And do you plan to stop the madness any time soon?"

"Oh! But it is such a fun little way to while away my time," Klaus said, bright and loud. "I do so love when you suffer at my hands, and then come so willingly for me! I love you knowing full well that I am your every pain and discomfort, and all your worldly pleasure and joy. I'm rather a nasty sod like that, hm?”

Elijah rolled his eyes.

Klaus would’ve liked to have reprimanded him for the attitude; perhaps a quick swipe with a flogger, this time? Although he did so love the company, and the tongue that offered such honest words. No other was true to him like Elijah dared be, and he did love the stuck up prick in his own way.

“I think I should like to fuck you,” he said casually. He wagged the end of his paintbrush at Elijah. “Tell me now if it’s not what you want.”

“How will you fuck me today?” was all Elijah asked.

How, indeed?

It was easiest to fuck him like an animal – to get him prone with his rear up and head down, and move to chase his own selfish pleasure. He’d seen Elijah come without Klaus ever having to touch his swollen cock, just for the thrill of being used. But _that_ was no punishment for a man that enjoyed it. No, no, no. No, there was no fun in the expected, was there?

So Klaus would ease into him like a lover. He’d be gentle and made slick with enough lube to drip a mess all over the bricks beneath them. He would stroke Elijah’s prostate on every pointed thrust and wring pleasure from the stiff rod before him, murmur words of endearment and warmth into the shell of Elijah’s ear. He'd be satisfied at no less than three orgasms, and at least a handful of tears. Those tender moments seemed to nudge his dear brother ever closer to the edge of his own sanity more than pain ever did.

“I’ll fuck you kindly,” he purred. He saw a badly hidden flinch cross his brother’s face. “I should like to have you wrapped up in my arms and held very close to me while I enter you. I’ll make love to you, Elijah. Make you mine. Just to say I can.”

Elijah’s throat swallowed around a hasty swallow. The edges of his face seemed to go a touch paler, but the noble brother just bowed his head.

“Whatever you want, Niklaus.”

Klaus snickered. It was a good answer. Safest thing Elijah had said all day. He set aside his brush and barely dabbed his hands on the colorful rag to rid the worst of the paint from his fingers, then padded over to his prisoner and crouched before him.

Lifting a single finger between them, he delicately traced the shape of Elijah’s serious brow, leading down to the height of his cheek and the clenched stiffness of his jaw. Pausing under his chin, Klaus lifted his head to stretch out his neck, eyes stuck to the fluttering pulse under his unmarked skin.

“Should I bite you this time?” he wondered. “That way I’d be even deeper inside you.”

“You’re already of my blood,” Elijah muttered.

“Yes, and I want more. I always want more. I want more than you’ll ever want to give me.” He studied the tilt of Elijah’s face, the aversion of his dark gaze. It had only taken three years to earn that smallest display of shyness. How long would it take for his devotion to waver completely? How long before he would beg Klaus for mercy, and plead his case to be made free? “Tell me I cannot bite you, and I will not.”

“You will do whatever you want,” Elijah told him quietly. “Whatever you need.”

“Say you don’t want me to,” Klaus goaded him. “Say you don’t want the pain of it.”

Elijah said _nothing_. He met Klaus’ eye and didn’t so much as blink. He was beginning to sweat a little more noticeably. Granted, there was nowhere for him to hide, what with his nudity and the spotlights angled to face him from every angle. He breathed out a shaky breath, and lifted his chin to unhook from Klaus’ finger.

“I will heal,” he said with a small bow of his head. He didn’t lift it again. “Whatever you do to me, and whatever pain you inflict, is nothing I won’t heal from.”

Klaus’ mouth twisted in a mad smile.

“The lesson you think I will learn, no doubt,” he accused softly. “That I will heal from the loss you caused with enough time. But I will not harm you, brother. No, I will only love you, and adore you. It’s the only way I can truly wound you, isn’t it? To show you these false kindnesses, and make you miss what we once were?”

“You cannot wound me in a way that matters when the rest of me is in turmoil,” Elijah informed him, still staring at the bricks under his knees. “You cannot hate me any more than I hate myself.”

“Beg to differ on that,” Klaus said brightly.

“I know,” Elijah agreed. He exhaled, and lifted his head. “Have at your punishment, Niklaus, and get back to your painting.”

Klaus opened his mouth to coo some vaguely threatening nonsense but he was silenced by the ringing of his idiot phone. The blasted thing! Thinking he would smash it with one of his paint shovels, he blurred to the side of the room with the blade angled down from above his head.

Fortunately his phone was face up, and he glimpsed the screen before he brought down the tool.

The green button swiped under his smudgy thumb and he pressed the receiver to his ear, shoulders tense.

“Caroline?” 


End file.
